Beyond the Bright Sea

by Lauren Wolk

  She lowered a seedling into a hole and gently pressed the earth firm around its slender stem. “I didn’t know what to think when he did that. Or when I saw him breaking the hull up for firewood when there’s driftwood for that.”

  She stopped and sat back on her haunches. “First time I’d ever seen a captain wreck his own boat,” she said.

  I could picture him doing it.

  And I wanted to go home right then.

  “Why did he do that?” I asked.

  Miss Maggie shook her head.

  “I didn’t know then and I’m still not sure now, but an island is one thing when a man has a boat, quite another when he doesn’t.”

  I tucked that in my pocket to think about later.

  “He has a boat now,” I said.

  “Yes. He has a boat now.” She took my chin and leaned down to look into my face, so close that I could see the green in her brown eyes, as if they were little round gardens. “And he has you, too.”

  Chapter 7

  The fire was there again the next night.

  This time, I had convinced Osh to come with me to see if it was there.

  “Look,” I said, pointing out toward Penikese. “Miss Maggie thinks it might be the bird keeper.”

  Osh shrugged his usual shrug. “Maybe it’s more of those foolish people,” he said. Sometimes, treasure seekers like the ones we often saw on Cuttyhunk spent time on the islands where no one lived. Other times, rich people sailed up from Newport to Gull Island, which was right alongside Penikese, to camp out in the “wilderness” for a night or two.

  I liked to sleep out, too, when the weather was fair, the sky sagging with stars. But those rich people slept in tents or staterooms that had no stars. If they’d really wanted wilderness, there was plenty of it on the mainland, complete with bears and coyotes and mosquitoes. Gull Island had fiddler crabs and piping plovers.

  I knew why Osh thought they were foolish.

  Miss Maggie had told me how he started his island life with nothing except that blue sail for shelter, even in a storm, and nothing much to eat but starfish soup in those first few days after he stranded himself there.

  “Starfish soup?” It was hard to imagine anyone being hungry enough to eat starfish.

  “He had trouble catching fish from the shore, especially without the right kind of gear. Wherever he had fished before, it wasn’t anywhere like here,” she said. “I spent some time watching him, wondering why he didn’t come over to Cuttyhunk to fish off the bass stands. After another day or two, I saw him pulling starfish off the rocks at low tide.”

  I told her that I had never heard of starfish soup.

  She laughed her tight little laugh. “He, Daniel . . . Osh . . . didn’t talk back then. Not one bit, though I called to him across the sand a few times, hoping he’d answer. And some of the men around here gave him trouble about squatting on their fishing ground, but he never even looked at them, let alone answered. So I didn’t know until much later what he did with those starfish.” She was still smiling at the thought. “When I finally knew him well enough to ask, he told me he had taken just one leg from each of them, to flavor the rainwater he cooked on his fire. ‘Better to have only four legs than to be dead,’ he said. ‘Better to eat starfish soup than starve.’”

  I imagined the rocks covered with lopsided starfish. And Osh, that hungry.

  “When did he start to talk?”

  “After you came along,” she said.

  Osh and I stood on the hill, looking out at the fire in the distance.

  “I’d like to sail over and find out whose fire that is,” I said. “I looked over this morning and I don’t think it’s campers up from Newport. I didn’t see a pleasure boat.”

  He snorted. “Well, if you didn’t see one, one must not exist.”

  He looked, in the moonlight, much younger than he was.

  “Why didn’t you talk when you first got here?” I asked.

  I expected him to be startled by such an out-of-the-blue question, but Osh wasn’t startled by much.

  Still, he took his time before he said, “What does that have to do with a strange fire?”

  “Nothing, I guess. Except that the fire you made when you first came here must have looked strange to someone across the water. And maybe they thought you were a foolish person from Newport, instead of a man eating starfish soup.”

  When Osh didn’t want to talk, he didn’t, so I was surprised when he answered me.

  “I didn’t talk because I had nothing to say. And there was no one to listen.”

  “There was Miss Maggie.”

  “Yes, there was Miss Maggie. A woman with a voice like a warden, barking at me from the bass stands. She started calling me Daniel because she felt bad yelling across at me without a proper name. Tried calling across in French, a little, and some Spanish, in case one of those was my language.” He shook his head. “The woman was determined.”

  “But you talked to her eventually.” I had wrapped this thread around my finger and was pulling on it as gently as I could, lest it break. Osh had never told me anything much about that time, before me.

  “Not for a long while, I didn’t. But when you arrived, and she heard you crying, she came all the way across, right up to my door, with a bottle of cow’s milk so fresh it was still warm and a flour sack she’d made into bunting for you to sleep in.”

  I waited.

  “And then she came over again and again, always with something new in her basket.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like oat mash and a salt spoon to feed you with when milk wasn’t enough. A little brandy when you started teething, which I made her take away right then.” He kept his eyes on the distant fire. “Babies cry when they hurt. Didn’t bother me.”

  “But maybe it bothered me.”

  He shook his head. “Not enough for brandy,” he said.

  I waited some more. “What else?”

  “Oh, clover honey when you were old enough for it. Clothes. A pair of little boots brought over on the ferry. Things like that.”

  “Didn’t she ever bring anything for you?”

  He turned and started back down the hill. “Made me that sweater I have. Sheared the wool, dyed it with indigo, spun it, knitted it, too big. Brought it over with a kettle of chowder and told me to grow into it.”

  I smiled. Miss Maggie was as skinny as a spring goat, but she didn’t like to see anyone else too thin.

  I followed him down the path. “So, do you think the fire is on Penikese?” I asked.

  “I suppose it is,” he said. “But a fire’s a fire. Nothing so odd about that. It’s just the bird keeper. Or a camper. Or another idiot treasure hunter. Why do you care?”

  “Because I do,” I said. “Because all of a sudden someone is building bonfires out there. There has to be a reason.”

  “There’s always a reason,” Osh said. “But what does that have to do with you?”

  “Maybe nothing,” I admitted. “I just want to go over and look around. Everyone thinks I was born there. But nobody knows that. I want to know, Osh. And maybe the bird keeper can tell me something about who used to live there. And whether there was ever a baby.”

  Osh walked ahead of me, a little faster than before. I almost did not hear him when he said, “You start looking back now and you might not see where you’re going.”

  This from a man who knew exactly where he’d been born and when and to whom.

  I hurried up to walk alongside him. “Will you take me out there tomorrow for a look?”

  Osh shook his head. “I will not,” he said. “It’s warm enough to put out the seedlings. You’ll help me with that tomorrow.”

  “The next day, then?”

  But Osh did not answer me.

  And it was at that moment that I began to plan my trip to P
enikese, with him or without.

  Osh was even more quiet than usual as we put out the seedlings the next day.

  The sun on my back was nice. The soft dirt was warm, too. But the memory of the fire on Penikese was warmer than anything, and I had trouble keeping my mind on my work.

  “You just planted two peppers together,” Osh said. “Which means two little plants instead of two big ones.”

  “At least they won’t be lonely,” I said. But Osh didn’t laugh.

  I eased the shoots out of the earth and gently combed their roots apart.

  “Sorry,” I said to the peppers, which seemed content to have been twined.

  Osh didn’t say anything else all morning, but when he brought bowls of mutton stew to the garden for our lunch, he said, “Tomorrow we can go out there.”

  I was surprised at two things: one, that he would take me there; two, that I felt a little sorry because I wouldn’t be going alone.

  I didn’t want to feel . . . apologetic about this trip to Penikese. Or to stand in the shadow of Osh’s impatience, his suspicion that this was a wild-goose chase.

  But I was also relieved at the prospect of Osh in my boat. He might not like the idea that I had a root in soil we didn’t share, but he was never mean. And I trusted him.

  “We’ll ask Miss Maggie if she’d like to come, too,” he said, which was the third and biggest surprise. Osh seemed to like Miss Maggie’s company, but he had never sought it unless I was sick.

  “Why?” I asked.

  Osh ate his stew, looking steadily into the bowl as if it knew the answer better than he did.

  “She’ll bring a picnic,” he said.

  A good enough reason but not the real one, which he soon gave me.

  “And she can talk to that birdman if he’s there.”

  That made more sense. Osh would not need to talk to anyone if Miss Maggie came along.

  “I can talk to the bird keeper,” I said.

  “You’re too small,” Osh said. “He’ll talk to me before he’ll talk to you. And he’ll talk to Miss Maggie before he’ll talk to either of us.”

  I nodded, not happy at such an idea, but glad that Miss Maggie might be going with us.

  “I’ll ask her after supper,” I said.

  And of course she said yes. No one liked an adventure more than Miss Maggie. As long as she could come home again afterward.

  Chapter 8

  That night, as I climbed into bed, Osh surprised me yet again by handing me a small wooden box that had once held spice from the mainland. It still smelled like cinnamon when I opened it.

  Inside there was a piece of paper, folded twice.

  “What’s this?”

  He tipped his head. “Look.”

  The paper was old and tattered. Osh sat beside me and held his lantern closer.

  Osh could tell good stories when he wanted to, but he couldn’t read at all. “Do you know what this says?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  I peered at the paper. The words on it were faded, some beyond reading, and in places the paper was so damaged that the writing had rubbed away. There wasn’t much left. Just little islands of words. I read them aloud, for both of us.

  if I could

  for now

  hope you

  bright sea

  better off

  lambs

  little feather

  I left something

  day it might help

  “What is this?” I asked again.

  Osh didn’t look at me. “When I found you and peeled away the cloth you were wrapped in, I discovered this pressed against your chest. It was wet, and some of the ink had run, and it came away from your skin in pieces.” He didn’t sound like the Osh I knew. “I laid it flat and put it back together and dried it. For you. For now.”

  I looked again at the letter. At the handwriting. For all the damage to the paper, the writing still looked like a woman’s, I thought. My mother’s, I thought.

  It was the first time I really believed I had a mother, though I knew I had not sprung up out of nothing. It just felt that way.

  “I don’t know what it means,” I said.

  “I don’t, either,” Osh said. “I didn’t think there was enough of it left to make any sense.”

  “But what if it did?” I said. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  Osh bowed his head. His hands, resting in his lap, were covered with scars from all his work and whatever had happened before me.

  “When you first came here, I didn’t think I’d get to keep you,” he said. “If people hadn’t been so afraid that you were from Penikese, they would have taken you away for sure.”

  I tried to picture that: Osh bolting the door. Locking the windows. Hiding me under the bed.

  “Miss Maggie wasn’t afraid,” I said, “and she didn’t try to take me.”

  Osh nodded. “Miss Maggie isn’t like other people.”

  I guess I understood all that, but I still didn’t understand why he had waited so long to show me what was in the spice box, and I said as much.

  “I always meant to show you,” he said. “When you were old enough.”

  But I’d been old enough for some time now. “You know how much I’ve wanted to find out where I came from,” I said.

  He sighed. Ran his hands through his hair. “And then? If you found out where you came from?”

  “Then I’d know,” I said, baffled by how upset he was. “Why would that be such a bad thing?”

  “You’re still a young girl,” he said. “Not too old to be taken away.” He looked at his hands. “Or to go because you wanted to be somewhere better than a shack on a rock in the middle of nowhere.”

  It was hard for me to believe that this man, who was as strong as February and August combined—and smart, besides—would be afraid of something like that.

  I leaned my head against his arm. “I’m happy here with you,” I said. “I won’t be any less happy if I know where I came from. And I won’t want to go back there. Especially if I’m from Penikese.” I closed my eyes. “I want to know, that’s all.”

  I felt Osh sigh.

  “Some folks might not give you the choice,” he said. “Your people might want you back.”

  I smiled, knowing he couldn’t see my face. “First off, if they had wanted me they wouldn’t have sent me away, especially not like they did.” I handed the paper back and scuttled under my blanket. “Second, you are my people.”

  He looked at me, the lantern light golden on his eyes. “I came here to be by myself. But the thought of being here alone now? Without you?” He cleared his throat. “I can’t think that thought. It won’t stay long enough to make sense.”

  I reached up and tugged on his ear. “Good,” I said. “Then let it fly away.”

  I closed my eyes.

  “There was something else with the letter,” he said.

  I opened my eyes again. “What?”

  He held out the spice box again.

  I sat up and found, in the bottom of the box, a scrap of rough cloth tied into a bundle with some twine.

  “Did you open it?” I asked. It weighed almost nothing.

  “Yes.”

  I pulled on the twine and found a ring nestled in the fold of cloth. I held it up in the light and was surprised to see the gleam of a red gemstone.

  It was too big, even for my biggest finger.

  “Do you think I’m from Newport, then?” I whispered. “From a rich family?”

  Osh shook his head. “Everything else about you said poor.”

  “Then where did this come from?”

  He shrugged. “It’s real gold. That’s all I know.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “It’s very old,” he said, “and
there’s dirt in where the ruby sits, but the gold hasn’t gone green like buried brass would have. Or bronze.”

  I could not stop looking at the ring. I could not stop thinking about who had worn it last.

  I put it back and set the box on the windowsill by my bed. “Will you help me figure out what it means?”

  He sighed. “We’re going to Penikese tomorrow, aren’t we?”

  I kissed his cheek. “We are,” I said. “Good night.”

  He said some words in his other language. And then he went out into the night, calling, “Mouse!” in a voice that was hoarse for no good reason.

  I closed my eyes and saw, in my own darkness, the letter someone had laid on my chest. That handwriting. That pale ink. The blank spaces in between.

  And I dreamed again about the sea and whales nearby and a dark, rocking world full of stars.

  Chapter 9

  The next day was bright and breezy. Perfect for a sail.

  The tide was inbound, the wind out of the east, which made it easy for us to reach Copicut Neck where Miss Maggie was waiting for us with a hamper of lunch.

  “Go on home,” she told her mare, Cinders, who was so gentle and smart that Miss Maggie could ride bareback and then turn her loose to meander home.

  “You take the food,” she said when I offered to help her aboard the skiff. “The day I need help into a boat from a sprout like you is the day I stay onshore with the widows and babies.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, climbing in after her.

  I wanted badly to tell her about the letter and the ring, but not now, not here, and not when Osh was with us. I knew Miss Maggie would have questions, but Osh had been especially quiet all morning. I didn’t think he’d feel like giving her any answers.

  Instead, he sat in the stern, his hand on the tiller, while Miss Maggie and I perched across from each other, ducking under the boom when Osh came about, otherwise enjoying the wind and the spray.