by David Walton
"No. Look." He reached past her and picked up the shard of bone she'd accidentally broken off . It was gray metal, just like the rest. "Open the jaw again," he said.
She did. Not only did the whole skeleton change back to bone, the detached fragment did as well, even though it wasn't touching the rest of the fish. She closed the jaw, and again the fragment changed.
"Keep doing that," Matthew said. "Open and close it every count of five."
"What are you doing?"
"I want to see how far away it still works." She snapped the jaw shut, counted to five, then opened it again. Matthew clambered down to the main deck and backed away from her across the bulk of the ship, holding the fragment. She assumed it was still changing, because he kept moving toward the bow. He climbed up to the forecastle and didn't stop until he was leaning against the bowsprit. To complete the experiment, she picked up the fish and made her way aft to the taff rail, as far away from him as she could possibly be on the ship. When she saw Matthew running toward her, she turned back and met him at the mizzenmast.
"It worked every time, no matter how far away." His face was flushed, and she grinned to see him so engaged.
"It's amazing," she admitted.
"How much farther might it go? For miles? What if it could reach all the way to England?"
"To England? I don't think so."
"Why not? We don't know how it works, so we don't know its limits. Just think what that would mean. . . ."
She shrugged. "It would mean quintessence can connect things that aren't physically connected. But we already know that."
"I'm not talking about what we know. I'm talking about what we can do." His eyes shone. "Can I have it?"
"What, the fish?"
"And the fragment."
She handed it over. "There's plenty to go around. What are you going to do?"
"I'll show you when it's done."
She watched him go, thinking how unlike his father he was at that moment. He was vulnerable in his excitement, with a carefree disregard for dignity that was very different from the preachy propriety he sometimes wore. She liked this Matthew a lot better.
SINCLAIR stood at the forward rail, watching the water. The seas had grown high, and the boat pitched up and down as it crested each wave and dove into each trough. In the darkness, it was easy to see the water's luminescence, which made each rolling movement more unsettling. Most of the passengers were curled in the hold, sick or trying not to be. John Marcheford, however, stood clutching the bowsprit, gazing west as usual.
The weather wasn't really dangerous, at least not yet, but Sinclair had ordered the mainsails reefed and the sea anchor thrown out to reduce the chance of broaching. He trusted the helmsman to keep the boat faced into the waves, so for the moment there was nothing for him to do. He joined Marcheford at the bowsprit.
The man was an enigma. Stuffy, dignified, and unromantic— the last man in the world for a wilderness outpost— yet he awaited the ship's arrival with apparent eagerness.
"What do you expect to find on Horizon?" Sinclair asked.
"A sanctuary. A haven for the religiously oppressed." It was a quick answer and sounded rehearsed.
Sinclair crossed his arms and leaned back and forth against the motion of the ship. The rolling seas didn't bother him; he'd seen far worse. "That's what it is for your people. What is it for you?"
Marcheford regarded him, apparently deciding whether or not to speak. "The apostle Paul said his ambition was to preach the gospel where Christ had never been named." His expression grew wistful. "I've preached to believers all my adult life. But that's what I want: to preach to those who have never heard."
It took Sinclair a moment to figure out what Marcheford was talking about. When he did understand, he exploded into laughter. "You want to evangelize the tamarins?"
Marcheford turned back to the waves. "Catherine Parris tells my son there are thousands of them. Dozens of tribes, isolated from the rest of the world. That means generations living and dying without a single messenger to share the gospel."
"Bishop, they're monkeys."
"You're not all that different from an ape yourself, taken from a physical point of view."
Sinclair grinned. "But I have a human mind and soul. These tamarins will probably cut your throat just to watch the blood flow."
"Thanks to your healing water, it won't do them much good."
Sinclair was surprised Marcheford had even drunk the water— he'd expected the bishop to object on some kind of religious grounds. "Don't fool yourself. It won't bring you back from the dead. If Collard had shot me through the heart instead of the stomach, I wouldn't have gotten up again."
"And where would your human mind and soul be then?"
It was a loaded question, and Sinclair brushed it aside. "We're on different sides in that fight."
"I don't think so. We both want this colony to succeed."
"You want to bring more creatures under God's power. I want to steal God's power for myself. I want to bring the dead back to life."
"You're serious. Isn't that just a little bit arrogant?"
Sinclair laughed. "I've already turned a rod into a snake, healed the sick, cast a devil out of a young girl, and made a blind man see. You don't think I can learn to raise the dead?"
"I'll settle with you getting us safely to the island," Marcheford said.
"That you can count on."
Chapter Eighteen
THIS time, it was the real thing. Land. Sinclair could hardly keep his eyes from the vast green expanse that dominated the western horizon, though it was still many miles distant. This was it. Horizon Island. They sailed close enough to see fifty- foot cliff s surrounded by jagged rocks. Then the fog rolled in.
Thick and impenetrable, it seemed to rise from the sea like an enchantment. They could see neither ocean nor sky. Worse, the fog caught the reflection of the water's glow, so that shimmering lines danced eerily through the air, giving the impression that the ship was moving every way but forward. All sense of direction vanished. The currents pulled against the ship unpredictably, and the sailors took frequent soundings, anxious to avoid running aground on unseen reefs or shallows.
The mood on the ship turned dark again, as lookouts strained to see what lay ahead of them. Barrel staves tossed into the water drifted away in different directions, and the wind seemed to blow on them from all points at once.
The sky darkened and lightning flashed. A new, eerie wind blew in, filling their sails but not shifting the fog. The waves grew higher.
Tilghman jogged up to Sinclair and threw a quick salute. After Collard's death, Sinclair had reluctantly promoted the sailing master to first mate, despite suspecting that he'd been complicit in the mutiny. To be sure there was no trouble, Sinclair had taken to keeping Maasha Kaatra with him on deck, his curved sword never far from reach.
Tilghman shot Maasha Kaatra a nervous glance. "With your leave, Captain, we should reef the sails and lie ahull to wait out the storm."
"Not this storm. This storm never calms."
"All storms calm eventually," Tilghman said, not quite masking the scorn in his voice.
"Not one caused by the ocean's water pitching over the edge of the world. Unless you want to go over the edge, keep our sails spread and run this ship with the wind."
"But we're blind. If the coast is to our leeward, we'll be pounded into driftwood on the rocks."
"Chelsey made his colony on the shores of a quiet bay on the southern end of the island. There's a narrow entranceway between the cliff s. That's where we're heading."
Tilghman looked desperate. "Captain, it's suicide. Even on a familiar coast, with no fog, I wouldn't risk a leeward landing with winds of this strength."
"We have little choice. Trust me. I'll guide us straight into the bay."
"We'll run aground, my lord. Magic water is one thing, but this is the sea. Step down and let us do the sailing, sir."
Sinclair didn't have much height o
ver the first mate, but he used what he had to loom over him. "Are you going to obey your orders or not?"
Tilghman didn't even flinch. "No, sir. Not to our deaths, sir."
"Then you're relieved. Bosun!" The fog was so thick that it was hard to see more than a few paces away across the deck. The bosun materialized out of the mist in response to Sinclair's shout. Tilghman flushed and looked as if he might still try to object, but Maasha Kaatra stepped between him and Sinclair, and Tilghman shut his mouth. Sinclair repeated his instructions, which the bosun bellowed out to the helmsman, and soon the ship was running from the wind with all her sails unfurled.
Several times, Sinclair thought he saw huge shapes cresting near the ship, but he couldn't be sure. A cold, driving rain drenched them, but still the fog didn't clear. Despite their speed, waves began breaking over the stern, and the helmsman fought with the wheel. Controlling their forward motion was crucial, allowing the waves to hit them at enough of an angle to reduce the impact, but not so much of an angle as to fling them sideways and capsize them.
Sinclair gave up on keeping the beetle box a secret. He no longer had the luxury of checking it in his cabin and then relaying changes of heading to the crew. He stood behind the helmsman, cracking the lid of the beetle box just enough to peer inside without drowning it. If he was seen, so be it— this was the moment of truth. He shouted slight adjustments to their heading, which the helmsman did his best to obey.
A shout from the bosun made Sinclair spin around. A gigantic wave yawned over them, far larger than the ship. Before he could grab hold of anything, it crashed down over them, knocking him to the deck. The ship tipped terrifyingly to port. It righted itself, but was now broadside to the waves. Then, just as it seemed they would capsize, the fog disappeared.
It didn't dissipate, or blow clear, or admit a ray of sun through a hole in the clouds. As if they'd crossed an invisible line, they left the fog behind and sailed into the blinding light of the gigantic evening sun. The sun filled the sky in front of them, so bright that for a moment Sinclair didn't see how near the horizon they had come.
The ocean current became a torrent, pulling them forward, toward the impossible point at which the water just stopped. Beyond it, there was nothing: no land, no water, just the dome of the sky. As they grew closer, they could hear the sound, like an enormous waterfall. It was the edge of the world, and the ship was spinning helplessly toward it like a cork caught in the rapids.
On the way, Kecilpenny had pointed out that if water flowed off the edge of the world, the oceans would soon drain dry. He suggested the world must be more like a bowl, with a rim that kept the water in.
Kecilpenny was wrong. Water was definitely flowing over the edge, and fast. Sinclair thought the bowl idea was probably right, only this was an overflowing bowl, implying that somewhere in the world, new water came into the system, either up out of springs or down from the sky as rain. Excess water flowed out over the rim.
But none of that would matter if they all died. They needed to find the entrance to Chelsey's bay, if it even existed. It was possible the settlement had been a delirious invention on the part of a dying man, but they had to try. Then he spotted it: a slim, dark opening in the cliff face coming up on their port side.
"Hard to port!" Sinclair screamed. "Now, now, now!"
The helmsman froze, staring at Sinclair with wild fear in his eyes. "You mean starboard."
"Port! Before we die!"
"That's straight into the cliff s!"
With a growl, Sinclair pushed him aside and grabbed the wheel. This
was the only chance they had. If they couldn't regain control of the boat within the next several moments, they would be lost. He strained at the wheel, and both Maasha Kaatra and the helmsman joined him, combining their strength to fight against the current.
Slowly, the rudder cut the water, and the ship turned, but they flew even faster toward the edge. Men shouted in terror. The ship, broadside to the current, began to list alarmingly as it turned, the sails dipping perilously close to the water.
The gap in the cliff face grew larger. For a terrifying moment he thought they would miss it entirely, but then they sailed straight through, into a short waterway with towering cliff s on either side. The ocean still raged behind them, but ahead the turquoise water shone flat and calm. A warm breeze ruffled their hair and brought with it exotic scents of unfamiliar fruits. Birds soared and dove.
The ship emerged into a deep bay lined with sandy beaches under a clear sky.
SINCLAIR was the first to see the dock. They sailed around the circumference of the bay, examining the shore with spyglasses in hopes of seeing evidence of the settlement Chelsey had left behind. A forest surrounded the bay, but the trees were unlike any he had seen anywhere else in the world. Some were topped with thick layers of moss, others with long green streamers that flapped in the wind. A few sent up enormous hovering leaves like kites, tethered by long stems that collected the sunlight and left their neighbors in shadow.
A wooden pier extended into the bay from a stretch of sandy beach near the mouth of a river. After food and shelter, a dock would be the first priority of a new settlement, because it would allow ships to be loaded with the trade goods that were the whole reason for the settlement to exist.
The dock was large enough and the water deep enough to accommodate a ship the size of the Western Star, but Sinclair chose to send the longboat instead. They didn't know what surprises might await them, and it was better not to find out when the ship was tied up at anchor.
He didn't trust anyone else to lead the landing party. For one thing, he came with papers that named him as the colony's governor, and he'd rather the settlers hear it from him than from anyone else. For another, no one else had his experience, his eye for detail, or his understanding of the possibilities of quintessence.
Unfortunately, he didn't really trust anyone else to stay and command the ship, either. The sailors had treated him with superstitious awe ever since his wound had so dramatically healed, but that kind of popularity could shift again as quickly as the wind. He didn't think Tilghman would sail off and strand him at this point, but just in case, he asked Maasha Kaatra to stay behind and shadow Tilghman.
They lowered the longboat from its berth into the water. Sinclair would go ashore with a team of Tate's soldiers to greet the settlers, then, if all was well, return to the ship. He was just about to climb down into the boat when a cry from a lookout brought him back on deck. "Ahoy! Boats in the water!"
It was true. Three small boats came toward them with five or six occupants each. Chelsey had left no more than thirty men behind, so this was at least half of them. Why send such a large delegation? Or were these the only survivors? Perhaps they were just excited to see fellow countrymen and couldn't hold back.
Sinclair examined the boats in his spyglass, then drew back in alarm. The boats were . . . He looked again. They weren't boats at all, but creatures with concave backs, each with a tall dorsal fin rising from the middle with a membrane stretched over a bony frame, catching the wind like a sail. Eyes and snouts protruded from the front, with long flat fins on each side. What the creatures looked like under the water, or how much of their bulk swam underneath, he couldn't tell, but on each of their backs sat five men.
No, not men. Tamarins. Tamarins wearing English clothes.
Chapter Nineteen
CATHERINE watched with apprehension as the tamarins approached. She wasn't ready. Her conversations with Chichirico, if you could call them that, were still awkward and slow. She didn't know enough to act as a translator, much less as a diplomat. She'd be lucky to understand them at all.
Besides, the tamarins were gray, not orange like Chichirico. They were larger, and their faces were rounder, with heavier jaws. Chichirico had told her a little about the different tribes on the island. He said the grays were an enemy of his people who valued treachery and war and liked to gain riches through conquest. That could be just his own prejudi
ce, of course, but it didn't seem good that these were the first tamarins they were encountering.
The gray tamarins sat motionless, apparently as unimpressed by their living boat as she would have been riding on a horse. Captain Sinclair raised his hand in what Catherine hoped would be interpreted as a friendly gesture and directed the men to throw rope ladders over the side.
The tamarins ignored the ladders. Catherine couldn't tell if they didn't understand what they were for, or if they just chose to do things their own way, but they leaped right through the hull of the Western Star and emerged on deck behind most of the onlookers.
There were screams and panic and weapons raised. For most of the sailors and passengers, this was their first real look at these tamarin.