I think back to my farmhouse in Tolerone, and to Mother and Priss and Ruby. Even though I haven’t started the most difficult part of this adventure, I’m already missing home and pining to stand on Kansas dirt and to hug my Kansas people. But to get back there, I’ve got to take care of my responsibility as quickly as possible. And that starts with finding Captain Abbot.
I stop a hunched-over man who is barefoot. “Do you know where I can find Captain Abbot?” I ask. I stare at the man’s feet, gnarled like tree roots and dirty as bark.
“Who?” he shouts. He cups a hand around his ear and leans close.
“Captain Abbot,” I shout. “The man going to the Southern Ocean.”
“Who wants to know?” the man shouts at me. Most of his mouth is brown and juicy. His lips puff with blisters and pustules. Before I have a chance to answer, he goes on, “Them grounds is empty of whales. Only a few gigantics left. Not worth the cost.” He puts his head back down and shuffles forward, but then he turns around and says, “Captain Abbot! He’s a madman. Steer clear of him, you young-uns.” The man turns around again and walks down the boardwalk. “He stays on his ship—the one at the end of the port. You can find him there, night and day. But steer clear of him, I say!”
We follow the man’s directions and walk on. Way down at the end is an old ship with black wood and patched sails. Its ropes dangle with seaweed. The name Xerxes fades on the prow of the ship.
“That’s got to be it,” I say to Eustace. A tingle rushes up my spine. I shudder and try to swallow down a metallic taste in my mouth. But my throat is too thick. I cough, and up come smoke and ash from Kansas. Then the Medicine Head, quiet for so long, seems to awaken with a chuckle. I stop walking. I wait and listen. Nothing else comes from the crate. One thing it is not easy to do is carry around a disembodied head with peculiar features. The crate weighs on me.
I point to the Xerxes. “That’s it,” I say to Eustace.
Eustace shields his eyes. He sighs. “I was afraid you were going to say that.” Fob whines a little. “But how do you know? Are you sure? Maybe it’s one of these newer ships. One that looks more… sturdy. That ship looks to be a thousand years old.”
“That’s not even possible, Eustace,” I say. “Or very scientific. That’s Captain Abbot’s ship. I’m sure. Let’s go.” I tug at his arms.
Eustace pulls back. “Didn’t you hear that man?” He looks at me as though I’ve said something dim-witted.
“I heard him,” I say. My face feels hot. “Darn you, Eustace! I’m going with or without you.” I try to press my lips together firmly so he knows I mean business. I remember my haircut and boy clothes and the Medicine Head’s crate I’m carrying and suppose I must look quite ridiculous. But Eustace simply blows a big puff of air out of his mouth and says, “All right, let’s go.”
Honestly, you couldn’t find a more loyal friend than Eustace if you searched the whole world over four times.
CHAPTER 23
We ask around about Captain Abbot, and most people give us sideways faces.
“Why?” they want to know.
“I’m going to sign on with him,” Eustace tells them. He points to me, “Him, too.”
Some of them ask us if we’ve lost our wits. They tell us there are all kinds of ships and ship captains hiring on, and that we should be careful to pick a ship and ship captain that can bring us safely back home again. I want to keep walking, but Eustace likes to stop and drink up all that these know-it-alls have to say. Fob runs into fourteen people every fourteen feet. He’s walking his crooked walk, but he’s also got his nose in the sky, sniffing the new smells and watching the flapping sails of the ships that hover over us.
Finally, we’re standing in the shadow of the Xerxes. The dock is wet and slimy. Fob’s four legs slip out in four different directions. He lands on his belly and scrambles to stand up again. Eustace leans over, grabs him around his stomach, and helps him. I walk like a penguin, sliding my feet forward rather than picking them up. I can’t remember ever feeling this unsteady. I wonder when the ground beneath me will be solid again. The ocean slaps against the dock, sending spray onto us and everyone and everything else.
The air is cool off the ocean. But the Medicine Head is whining. It should be still and quiet, but it’s calling, even if the cry is soft. I feel a little gut-sick. Is Captain Greeney near? I decide to keep moving forward. Get on the ship, I tell myself. You’ll be safe once you’re on the ship.
The Xerxes is ancient. Barnacles cling to its hull. The sails are rolled tidily, but they are gray with age and wear. Carpenters lean over the side of the ship and pound new boards over cracks and holes. A long plank joins the dock where we stand to the deck.
When we get to the ramp, a woman sitting on the deck eyes me—a very black, very muscular woman with the shortest hair possible and the least clothing I have ever seen on a person. I have to admit that I’m a bit shocked to see any woman on a ship, especially a black woman. And then I notice what she is doing.
“Hey!” she yells at us. She’s sharpening the end of her harpoon with a stone.
Fob whimpers. He slinks behind Eustace’s legs.
“Not you!” she snaps at Fob. She stands.
She’s tall, much taller than Father was. She’s the tallest person I’ve ever seen, maybe over six feet. The muscles in her arm bulge like pears. The tendons in her forearms quiver like piano strings. She’s got raised scars over her stomach that make the forms of circles with eyes and triangles with snakes and one that’s an X made out of two harpoons. She’s also got a scar pattern in the middle of her chest. That one looks like a baby’s handprint.
She purses her lips at us. “Why you kids stare at me that way? Where you think you will go?” she says. She eyes my crate. “What’s in that?” She turns her ear to it.
Fob acts real nervous. He puts down his ears and peeks from behind Eustace’s legs.
Eustace clears his throat. “We were going to sign on with this whaling expedition, ma’am. Do you do the hiring?” His voice is steady and calm, as though he’s not scared of the lady, who looks like she could bust him in half with one punch to the stomach.
“I’m Nova,” she says. “I do nearly everything. First mate. Chief harpoonist.” Nova rights herself, steps back from me and the Medicine Head. She glances at it nervously. Then she turns her glower to Eustace. “You want to work on Xerxes? With Captain Abbot?” She spits on the ground. “Maybe you kids don’t have sense. Go home to your mothers. Go.” She waves us off and goes back to sharpening her harpoon. Sparks fly off the tip. But she lifts her eyes to the crate and then to my eyes.
I’m scared of her, but I clear my throat. “Listen here,” I say. I clear my throat again. “I need to get on that ship.”
She studies my eyes, unblinking, for half a minute. Her eyes shimmer green and amber.
“With Captain Abbot,” I add.
Then she blinks slowly. All the muscles in her face soften, and she says, “Ah!” as though she’s just recognized something in me. “Oh, yes?” she says. “This ship sails to the roughest seas, to the coldest ends of the earth.” She uses the harpoon to point to the Xerxes. “This ship hunts the biggest leviathans in the ocean, with killer flukes and giant jaws.” She raises her brow, as if she’s questioning whether or not I understand the perils that might lie ahead. “Captain Abbot is a fierce one.”
I shake my head back and forth and adjust the Medicine Head’s crate on my hip. “I don’t care if it’s the devil himself steering it,” I say. “I have to get on this voyage.”
Nova takes her harpoon and slaps the handle against her chest. She leans over me. This close, I can see she’s very beautiful, or used to be. Her big eyes look as old as the world. They are ringed with long, lovely lashes. Her brows are thin and arched. “You don’t fool me,” she whispers in my ear. I catch my breath and hold it. “I know you, girl. I know who you are.”
She turns her head toward the Medicine Head’s crate as though she’s listenin
g to it. I listen, too. But it’s quiet. She taps the top of the crate with the tip of her harpoon, then straightens up again. “All right, young ones. Nova will get you on ship, but you been warned. Storms blow over Captain Abbot once in a while. Don’t know what will happen. Or to whom.” She looks at me curiously. “You be careful,” she says. She flits her gaze to the crate again and sighs a doomed sigh.
I exhale.
Fob begins to growl, and he curls up his top lip. The Medicine Head whispers. Hold me. I startle. A tingling sensation, the one that runs through my body when something is about to happen, rushes from my fingertips to my face. I look up to Nova. Is it calling for her? For me? Will it never give up?
“Stop that, Fob,” Eustace scolds. But Fob won’t stop. He’s whimpering and barking and trembling and fidgety. He’s looking down the boardwalk. The hair on the back of his neck stands up.
From behind me, someone shouts. I hear a commotion of boxes being tipped over and people shouting “Watch it!”
“Girl!” a voice booms. “Child Wonder, you stop right there! Don’t move!”
I whirl around. The crowd has parted. One man walks rapidly down the middle of the boardwalk. My sweat turns cold. My ears ring. My hands go numb. I’m scared. I wish I could close my eyes and instantly be back in Kansas with Priss and Mother. I clutch the Medicine Head to my chest. I hold my breath, try to regain control over my fears, over everything. The air gets muggy suddenly, and my shirt clings to my hot back. The Medicine Head grows louder and more desperate. Hold me!
I look at Nova, and she is looking at the crate. She must hear it! I look at Eustace, but he’s looking at the man coming toward us. Eustace’s face is tight, and his body looks as though it will leap into action at any moment. He looks like a cat about to pounce.
Within seconds, Captain Greeney’s a few feet from us, and he’s boring into me with fiery eyes. He’s clearly seen the crate and is probably no longer afraid that it might be a snake. I’m still holding my breath, and my head starts to feel light. The ground beneath me feels unsteady, like I might fall. Then he’s there. And he’s reaching for the Medicine Head. In a flash, Nova fixes her harpoon on him. Eustace pushes me behind him. Fob snarls like a mad dog.
“Put down the harpoon, Nova,” Captain Greeney says. How do they know each other? I wonder.
“You step back,” she says to Captain Greeney. “You better get away from the captain’s ship.”
Captain Greeney’s lips curl, but they don’t make a smile. It’s more like the closed mouth of a snake. “That old man? Is he around here?” Greeney looks up to the deck of the ship. “I didn’t think he ever came out of there. Or at least that’s what I heard.”
Nova jabs the tip of her harpoon at him, but she doesn’t poke him. “I mean it. I’ve got nothing to lose.”
There’s a lot of movement behind me. The crew of the Xerxes gathers around us slowly. They all carry the tools of a whaler. Harpoons, mincing knives, toggles, chains, ropes, and hooks. They look like a ragtag bunch of misfits, but I’m glad they’re on Nova’s side. My side.
Captain Greeney loosens the silk cravat from his neck. “Well, you and I both know that’s not true,” he says. “You kill me, you’ll spend all of eternity in a prison cell.”
Nova jabs at him again. “Don’t make trouble. Get on out of here.”
Captain Greeney lifts his hands, palms up. He slaps them together and wrings them. “Tell you what,” he says. “Give me the girl, that little brat I’ve just chased across the country, along with her baggage, and I’ll outfit you with a new ship. Your own ship. You won’t be under the thumb of that madman you work for anymore. You can spend the rest of your very, very, very long life as captain of your own vessel.”
Eustace curls his arm around me, as though he’s afraid Nova might do it. I wonder myself if she’ll turn me over to Captain Greeney. She doesn’t even know me. Why would she care? Why would she protect me?
By now, all the whalers are surrounding us in a semicircle. Though most of them are grimy, pale, stinky, fearsome, toothless, and hairless, I’m filled with a sensation of safety. They close in. Captain Greeney takes a few steps backward.
Nova walks toward him with her harpoon aimed exactly at his heart.
“You won’t have it,” she says to him.
“I will,” he says. “Maybe not right this moment, but as long as it’s on this planet, I will find it, and I will have it.”
Then he leans in a little, looks me right in the eye, and says, “Good day to you, Hallelujah Wonder. We will meet again, I assure you.” He turns on his boot heels and leaves.
The deck begins to spin. I exhale finally. Then it feels like I fall into a deep, black hole.
CHAPTER 24
When I wake, I am rocking to and fro in a hammock. It’s dark and stinky, but it’s warm and cozy. I blink and blink until my sight focuses. Creaking wooden planks make up the ceiling above me. Pale green, spongy moss grows on them.
Moss is a very interesting type of plant, from a scientific point of view. It doesn’t have roots. Instead, it gets its water from its leaves. Also, and this is very interesting, I think: Moss grows best on the north side of trees. And you’ll be surprised how I know that. It’s not because of Father this time. Eustace told me. Moss likes to grow in cool, damp places, and the sun shines too hard on the south sides of trees, so moss mostly grows on the north. Slaves escaping their masters and running north use the moss on the trees as guidance to get where it’s safe. That’s what Eustace says, anyway.
Above me and all around me, hundreds of ropes, many pairs of pants, blankets, coats, boots, dried meat, and shovels and knives and scythes hang from the rafters and from ropes tied between the rafters. They swing back and forth. We’re moving.
I wonder where Eustace and Fob are. I try to sit up, but the hammock closes around me and tilts.
“Rest,” says Nova. I see her there, as if she appeared out of the dark. She puts her hand on my chest, and I lie back down. She’s wearing some kind of animal skin, and the edges of her garment are jagged, like the person who made it didn’t bother to cut it into proper shapes before stitching it together.
“Where’s Eustace?” I say to her. “Where’s my crate? I need it.”
“Calm down,” Nova says. “It’s beneath your hammock. Rest, I say.” She pats my chest like a mother might.
Every muscle in my body contracts. My jaw is clenched. I want the Medicine Head. I have to protect it.
“Captain Greeney!” I say. “Is he gone?”
Nova doesn’t answer right away. I hold my breath and wait for her to speak. The ocean splashes the side of the ship, and its boards moan under the strain of the water’s pressure.
“Yes,” she says. “For now.” She unwraps a piece of dried bread from a cloth. “Eat this.”
My stomach flops like a fish on land. I take the bread and bite into a corner. It’s hard and tasteless. But after the first swallow, my stomach’s acrobatics stop, even though my mouth is left dry. “Thanks,” I say to Nova. “I need my crate,” I add.
She ignores me. “Eat it all,” she says. “Will calm the seasickness.” She brings her fingers to her own neck and rubs, then crosses her arms. “How do you know him?” she asks. She leans close to me. I can smell salt and sweat and smoke on her. “I know him, too. He’s a bad man. He brings bad luck on ships.” She watches me out of the sides of her eyes.
Her eyes have a knowing to them that doesn’t seem possible. Her pupils are deep and dark, like a cave going back to the beginning of time. Her irises remind me a little of a turtle’s eye, which might not seem like a compliment. But it is. All you have to do is get close to a turtle and see for yourself how interesting and beautiful a turtle eye can be.
Something else about Nova’s turtle eyes is how they entice a person to look closer and, well, trust her, I guess.
I try to think of what to say. Where do I begin? Do I tell her how Greeney and my father once sailed together in the navy? Do I tell her
that Captain Greeney grew jealous of my father and that he was upset when my father sent him home from the Antarctica expedition? That he wanted the artifacts my father collected and credit for my father’s discoveries? That he wanted, in particular, the Medicine Head? That his lies destroyed my father’s career and forced him to move his family across the country?
“He killed my father,” I say.
“Captain Wonder?” she asks. “He was your father, then.” She nods. “Hmmm.”
My neck tightens. I’m awash with longing and memory, but my heart leaps. The mention of my father’s name jolts me like a breaking branch startles a hare. I want to talk about him. I want other people to talk about him.
“Yes!” I say. “Captain Charles Wonder, the greatest scientist in the world.” I pronounce every one of those words with crisp tongue and sharp lip. I want each of those words to be perfectly understood.
“I see,” she says. She exhales. “Oh, girl, I am sorry for your pain.” She smooths my hair. She’s tender, like a mother. She looks tough and fierce, but I wish I could curl up into her like a child might. “Captain Wonder was a good man,” she whispers. “I knew it when I looked at you. You have the look of him. He was a smart man.” Her voice sounds like velvet to me.
I get excited that someone knows of him, remembers him. Keep talking, I think. Keep talking about him. Every word related to my father makes me know he was alive. That might seem silly to you, but sometimes I wonder if I was dreaming it all. Sometimes the memories of him are so distant that I worry I made it all up and then forgot that I made it up.
“Yes.” I bite on the dry bread and choke down a nibble. “He was. I miss him. You knew him? You remember him?” It’s hard to talk. But I want to. I want Nova to keep talking. “Tell me how you knew him,” I say. I don’t want to cry in front of Nova or anyone. I swallow again to try to relieve my neck.
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