Little Lion

by Ann Hood

  The beach seemed to stretch forever, and Maisie couldn’t see anyone else on it. A palm tree lay on its side as if it had been knocked over, but otherwise the beach was empty. Maisie sat on the trunk of the fallen tree and pondered their situation. An empty beach, somewhere tropical. Another thought hit her. Not only didn’t she know where they’d landed, she also had no idea when they’d landed. For all she knew, this place was completely deserted. Or inhabited by angry natives. Nervous, she looked around for clues. But there was nothing but this long, white sand beach and the turquoise water and Felix goofing around in it, diving and splashing like they were in Cape May on vacation with their parents instead of stranded here.

  Think, Maisie told herself. Last time, they’d landed in that barn and Clara Barton had appeared immediately. Logically, someone would appear here, too, she decided. Any minute. Someone who needed the coin. That made her feel better. Maisie smiled, pleased with herself. They didn’t have to do anything except wait right here. Any minute now, a person would walk up to them and things would start to make sense. She lifted her face toward the sun. Her mother would kill her for not using sunscreen, but Maisie had no choice. All she could do was hope her nose didn’t get too red and her freckles didn’t multiply too much.

  Time passed this way. Maisie sat on the trunk of the palm tree, waiting. Felix played around in the water. The sun rose higher and the day grew hotter, until eventually Maisie began to worry and Felix got bored and came out of the ocean and up the beach to where his sister had started to pace.

  “We’ve been here a long time,” she said.

  “And I’m starving,” Felix said.

  Maisie’s stomach grumbled. “I thought for sure someone would show up.”

  Felix stared off down the length of the beach. “It’s pretty deserted,” he said finally.

  “Do you think we’re on a desert island?” Maisie asked.

  Felix chewed on his bottom lip, which had started to get chapped from the salt and sun. “I don’t know,” he concluded. Then he said, “I need lunch and ChapStick.”

  “They don’t have ChapStick on desert islands,” Maisie said miserably.

  “They don’t have food, either. Just coconuts and fish you have to catch with your bare hands,” Felix said, starting to get nervous.

  “Well,” Maisie said, “there’s only one thing we can do: explore.”

  “What if it’s dangerous out there? What if there’s wild animals or headhunters or—”

  “We can’t just stay here like this forever. We’ll starve.”

  “Maisie?” Felix said softly. “Where do you think here is?”

  She swallowed hard. “Maybe Florida?”

  Felix nodded. “Florida wouldn’t be so bad.”

  Maisie hoped he didn’t ask the next logical question.

  But he did.

  “When do you think it is?” he asked.

  Their eyes met. Felix waited.

  Then Maisie said, “I have absolutely no idea.”

  Maisie and Felix began to walk. After some discussion on which direction would be best, they decided it didn’t matter. Neither left nor right held any more promise than the other. They just started walking in the direction of the sun, which had reached straight overhead and now was to their right.

  They walked for a very long time and still came upon nothing but more white sand, more palm trees, and more fallen trees. Neither of them spoke. What was there to say? They were hungry and both of them were more than a little afraid, even though the beach was beautiful and the weather warm and lovely, with just the right amount of breeze to keep them from getting too hot.

  Eventually the beach curved and they saw in the near distance a harbor filled with boats.

  “We’re saved!” Felix said happily. Boats meant people and restaurants.

  But seeing boats didn’t make Maisie feel optimistic. Especially those boats. Oh, there were a lot of them, but each and every one was a sailboat. Large, with tall masts and weathered tan sails, these boats looked old. Really old. Like maybe a hundred years old. Or more.

  “These look like the tall ships,” she said.

  The tall ships had passed through New York Harbor a few years ago. Their parents had taken them down to Battery Park to watch them sail past. They’d had to listen to some boring guy give the history of tall ships. Some of them were modern and still used today. But the term originally referred to ships from long ago. Wooden sailing ships. Like the ones Maisie was looking at right then.

  Relieved, Felix grinned. “We’re at a tall ship festival?”

  “I don’t think it’s a festival,” Maisie said.

  They had reached the end of the sandy beach and had come to a wooden dock with a steep staircase leading up to the boats and the street.

  “Careful,” Maisie said as they climbed the stairs. She pointed to where the wood had rotted and left gaping holes, the water shining through them.

  The air stunk of fish and garbage and things rotting in the sun, and the noise level increased as they made their way up. Men shouted. Metal clanged. Sails flapped. Water smacked the dock.

  It began to sink in with Felix that these tall ships were actual, working boats. Which meant they had gone back to a time when sailing ships carried cargo and traveled from harbor to harbor. But exactly when was that?

  At the top of the stairs, Maisie and Felix stopped to take in the scene.

  Men with bulging muscles pulled thick ropes and carried enormous crates both off of and onto ships. Other men gathered, bickering and shouting, pointing at this ship or that crate.

  “At least they’re speaking English,” Maisie whispered.

  English, yes. Felix heard British accents and other accents—maybe German? Dutch?—that he didn’t understand, but no one sounded American.

  The street that bordered the harbor had many small, low buildings and the appearance of a town of sorts.

  “Let’s cross the street,” Maisie said.

  As they made their way through the crowd, they saw black women squatting by the side of the road selling food from baskets. Pineapples cut into chunks, mangos, strips of coconut, fried fritters, and dried fish. Maisie and Felix paused, their mouths watering.

  One of the women, dressed in a bright-yellow cotton dress with big, red flowers on it and a bandana wrapped around her head, motioned to them.

  “My conch the freshest here, children,” she said.

  Her basket held crisp fritters, glistening with oil.

  “We don’t have any money,” Maisie said, her stomach aching with hunger pangs.

  “Too bad,” the woman said. She turned her attention to other people passing by.

  “Conch fritters here,” she called to them.

  Maisie and Felix lingered, the smell of her fritters mixing with that of ripe pineapple.

  “Wait a minute,” Felix said. “We do have money.”

  Maisie looked at him, confused. Then she broke into a grin.

  “Ma’am,” she said to the woman. “Here.” She held out the heavy silver coin.

  The woman took it and brought it close to her eyes. Then anger flashed across her face.

  “What kind of fool you think I am?” she said. “This is a counterfeit dollar.” She tapped the coin with her finger. “1794?”

  Maisie and Felix looked at each other.

  The woman plopped the coin back in Maisie’s hand. “Off with you,” she said, shaking her head. “1794. How am I going to use money from a year that hasn’t even happened yet?”

  “It’s earlier than 1794?” Felix whispered to his sister.

  “And she’s not who we’re looking for,” Maisie whispered back.

  The woman, realizing they hadn’t gone, studied their faces openly.

  “You hungry children, y
es?” she said gently.

  They nodded.

  The woman studied them. “All dressed in funny-looking clothes. And those funny-looking clothes all wet.”

  Maisie returned the woman’s gaze.

  “So many hungry children since the hurricane,” she said, shaking her head sadly.

  A hurricane! That explained why so many trees had been knocked down. Felix sighed, relieved they hadn’t turned up a week earlier.

  “Take my conch fritters, hungry children,” the woman said.

  Maisie and Felix each took a warm fritter.

  “Thank you,” Felix said.

  The woman nodded, satisfied.

  Maisie waited. Would something else happen?

  But the woman seemed to have already forgotten them. She turned to three men who counted money and placed it in her hand, taking several fritters from her basket.

  Disappointed, Maisie walked away.

  The fritters tasted salty and delicious. It took three bites to finish them off. Felix licked his fingers while they continued on their way. People of all sizes and shapes and colors pressed together. Now the smell of sweat and animals mixed with all the other terrible smells. Felix covered his nose and mouth with his hand, breathing in the ocean smell on it. The fritter, which had tasted so good, turned sour in his stomach. Finally, they broke through the crowd and stood at the edge of the road, the harbor behind them and the row of buildings across the street.

  “I thought someone would come up to us back there,” Maisie admitted. “When we landed in that barn, Clara showed up right away. But it seems like we’re really on our own this time.”

  Felix didn’t want to believe that. “Someone will show up. You’ll see,” he said, trying to convince himself as well as his sister.

  “Let’s just go into one of these stores and see if we can figure out where we are,” Maisie said.

  “Good idea.”

  He let her lead the way because he knew that would make her feel better. As they crossed the street, Felix noted that instead of cars, carriages lined one side of the dirt street, and here and there sat piles of horse poop, which added to the smell. There didn’t seem to be any people, either, unlike the harbor that had been so crowded.

  Maisie paused, trying to figure out which building to go into. They all looked pretty much the same, so she finally chose the one closest to them, which was also the largest. The numbers on it were 56-57, and the sign outside said BEEKMAN AND CRUGER. She pushed open the wooden door and stepped inside, Felix close behind her. It was dark and cool, and it took a minute for her eyes to adjust.

  Bolts of fabric filled shelves on one wall; heavy brown jugs stood in front of them; boxes held tools, rope, yarn, and pieces of wood.

  “A general store,” Felix said, running his hands along burlap bags of rice and dried beans.

  “Hello?” Maisie called.

  Even though the door had been unlocked, the store appeared to be empty. Outside, behind the store, Maisie could see a large enclosed yard. But it, too, was empty.

  “Maybe someone’s upstairs,” Felix said, pointing to a stairway near where they’d entered.

  They went upstairs and opened another door at the top. In a large office, a teenage boy sat on a stool at a high desk, writing with a gray feather pen in an enormous open book.

  He didn’t notice them.

  Maisie and Felix waited. The boy had reddish hair, high cheekbones, and what their mother would call a strong chin. He looked very serious bent over the book like that.

  Maisie cleared her throat.

  Slowly, the boy looked up from the book to Maisie and Felix. His violet-blue eyes swept over them, sizing them up.

  “Yes?” he said finally.

  “I wonder,” Maisie began.

  The boy climbed off his stool and walked boldly toward them. He wasn’t very tall, only a few inches taller than Maisie. But he had such confidence that he seemed to be much taller.

  “Yes?” he said again, standing in front of them now.

  Maisie swallowed hard. The boy made her feel all discombobulated.

  Felix glanced at his sister, startled. She was blushing! He had never seen any boy make her blush before.

  “Could you please tell us the date?” Felix said, taking over.

  The boy laughed. “You’ve come in here to find out the date?”

  “Yes,” Felix said.

  “It’s October the second. 1772.”

  “1772?” Felix said, his mind racing. The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776. Four years from now, he thought.

  “Yes,” the boy said, curious now. “Have you been away at sea?”

  “Yes!” Maisie said, delighted. “We have! How did you know?”

  He pointed at Maisie’s blue jeans. “You’re dressed like sailors,” he said. The boy folded his arms. “You’ve been away at sea and landed here on Saint Croix because . . . ?”

  “Saint Croix!” Maisie said, even more delighted. She didn’t know anything at all about Saint Croix except that it was somewhere in the Caribbean.

  “Have you landed in the wrong place?” the boy said.

  “Yes.” Maisie laughed. “You could say that.”

  “We have ships that go all over the world,” the boy bragged. “Perhaps I can help you get where you need to be.”

  “Really?” Maisie said. “You can rescue us?”

  The boy puffed up his chest. “I can do anything,” he boasted.

  “Who are you that you can do anything at all?” Maisie said.

  “Alexander Hamilton,” the boy said proudly, as if it meant something.

  Alexander Hamilton

  This guy is so full of himself, Maisie thought. Even as she thought it, her stomach did a funny little tumble. Ever since first grade, when Felix announced he was in love with Tamara Berkowitz and intended to marry her, Felix could not help getting crushes on girls. Sarah Thacher from the Bleecker Playground. Adrienne Stone from the Carmine Street Pool. Charlotte Weinberg from Little League. And, Maisie suspected, that girl Lily from his class now.

  But Maisie found boys mostly annoying, sometimes smelly, and, very rarely, fun to hang out with. So why in the world did this Alexander Hamilton, who strutted like a rooster, make her stomach do this tumble and her hands get kind of clammy? Was this what Felix felt for all those girls?

  “I’m Felix Robbins,” Felix was saying, “and this is my sister, Maisie.”

  “Where did you two come from?” Alexander asked.

  Felix waited for Maisie to answer. She always had something to say. But she just stood there, looking a little pale and a lot confused.

  “Um . . . Rhode Island?” Felix said.

  Delight filled Alexander’s face. “The colonies?” he said.

  “I . . . I guess so,” Felix said thoughtfully, realizing that, of course, if the Declaration of Independence hadn’t been signed yet, the United States didn’t exist. “Yes. The colonies.”

  “You must tell me everything about them,” Alexander said, slapping Felix on the back. “Of course, New York is the one that truly interests me. My friend Neddy is there at King’s College.”

  “There’s no such college,” Maisie blurted, finally able to find her voice.

  Alexander laughed. “Don’t tell Neddy that. He’s been studying there for two years.”

  “We’re from New York,” Maisie said. “King’s College—”

  Alexander pointed a finger at her. “I thought you were from Rhode Island,” he said.

  “We are now,” Maisie said. “We moved there from New York.”

  “Then you know it’s between Barclay and Murray Street. Neddy says it sits on a bluff overlooking the Hudson.” Alexander sighed. “What I would give to get there myself.”
/>
  “Me too!” Maisie said, drawn even more to this young man.

  “Ah!” he said, nodding. “So you are trying to get back there?”

  “More than anything,” Maisie said. “Our mother wants to be in Rhode Island,” she muttered.

  Sadness crossed Alexander’s face. But then he took a breath and forced a smile at them.

  “I’ll buy you some of Saint Croix’s best fish if you’ll tell me all about New York. And Rhode Island, too,” he said.

  “That would be great,” Felix said, his stomach grumbling. “We haven’t eaten in a while.”

  Alexander threw his arm around Felix’s shoulder. “Come then,” he said. “Right across King’s Street on the wharf we can get the freshest fish in Christiansted.”

  They stepped back outside into the sunlight.

  “Christiansted is the capital?” Felix asked. He kind of wished Alexander would take his arm off his shoulder, but the boy kept Felix firmly in his grasp.

  “The capital of all nineteen miles of this island,” Alexander said. He motioned to the hills that rose above the town. “There are three hundred and eighty-one plantations up there, covering about thirty thousand acres.”

  “What do they grow?” Felix asked.

  “Sugar, mostly. But cotton, too. And coffee,” Alexander said.

  The street was now even more crowded, but Alexander seemed to know everyone. Passing men tipped their hats to him or wished him a good day.

  “You’re pretty popular,” Maisie said as they pushed through the crowd.

  “Yes,” Alexander said proudly. “I know just about everyone on the island. And I know about everything, too. I ran the entire business for Mr. Cruger when he got sick last year,” Alexander continued boasting. “For six months! I had to negotiate prices for cargo shipments to and from New York, collect the monies. Everything involved with imports and exports. When he came back from New York in March, he told me that without me he couldn’t have kept things going.” Alexander straightened his back. “And all this at only seventeen years old. Impressive, eh?”