Set the Stars Alight

by Amanda Dykes

  “I knew some of it,” she said. “From Killian Blackaby, the day of your trial. But not all. What made you do it?”

  Frederick leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked at the ground. He did not wish to bring her more pain. But he knew her now, knew she would see right through him if he gave her less than the truth.

  “That day . . . when your father found me under the yew tree.”

  “You think of that, still?”

  “I think of it always. The boy he found had nothing.”

  She watched him. She could have scoffed at his claim so easily. But she did not scoff, and to him that spoke volumes.

  White clouds veiled the stars above in wisps. “That boy had only a heart so heavy he could not carry it any longer. He did not know where to go, what to do, what his place in this world was.” He spoke of yearning to do something that mattered, but he did not know what that could be in a world where he seemed always to be shuffled into corners or bellowed at. When his mother, his one good thing, was taken by fever, he’d had nothing left. And so he left.

  “I imagine that shepherd thought he was simply helping a lost lad. What he did not know—what I wish he had known—was the moment he saw him and stopped and laid aside everything in order to carry that boy to a good place . . . he moved heaven and earth. He gave me hope.”

  Juliette watched on solemnly, when Frederick raised his head to meet her gaze, opened her hand a moment, motioned for him to continue.

  “That is why I did it. I begged God beside your father’s grave, asked Him to take me into the earth instead of him. To bring you life once more and help me somehow make it right.”

  “Seems your prayers were answered,” she said, softly, earnestly.

  Frederick thought back to what he had said. “Aye, he did take me into the earth after all. Thanks to you.” He gave a sad laugh.

  Juliette opened her mouth, but apparently thought better of whatever she had meant to say, and waited for him to continue.

  “I took your father’s life,” he said.

  Juliette shook her head slowly. “Frederick, no. We were just children. ’Twas a sickness that took many a life. Yes, I blamed you, but . . . well, it was Elias who showed me you had lost your mother to the same fever, that you nearly lost your own life, too. We could not know, for certain, from whence came Father’s affliction. I should never have blamed you.”

  Frederick searched her, words failing.

  “You mean that, Juliette?”

  “I do,” she said, conviction lacing the words with resolute truth.

  Frederick shook his head. “Thank you.” He did not know whether he would ever be as sure as she that the shepherd’s death was not his doing. But her words embodied grace he had not known his soul longed for.

  He continued. “I thought . . . if I could give your child a chance to know her father . . . though it send me to the ends of the earth, or cost me my very life, I would do it. In an instant. Just like that kind shepherd did for me.”

  “And you did that very thing.” Her words were hushed. “Frederick, Elias burned hard and fast at whatever he did. Father saw that early on and worried for him. He used to say all that burn would run his candle out before his time.”

  This Frederick agreed with.

  “It was not your fault, Frederick.”

  Frederick’s every muscle froze, every bone so still for fear of destroying these words she spoke. He dared not ask what she meant, for it shamed him that there were so very many things she could be referring to. Her father . . . her husband . . . the fact that her only company now was once her sworn enemy . . . the fact that she—and her child, for heaven’s sake—lived in obscurity in a cave.

  She reached across the dark and grabbed his hand, and in the reaching bridged two universes, broke right through their barriers and cast a fortress of truth around him.

  “You have done well,” she said. “Elias is—was—what Father said. He was a fire burning hot and fast. And most of the time, it was good. I loved him for that.”

  Frederick laughed. “Aye. Did he ever tell you of the time he gave two midshipmen the scare of their lives?”

  The look of surprise and doubt on her face told him no. He laughed, recounting the way some of the older lads had taken to stealing blankets right off of sleeping sailors in the middle of the night, using fishhooks and twine.

  “After they stole mine and I spent the next two nights shivering in my hammock, he decided to strike back. He made a deal with the cook and collected all the chicken feathers he could. Then he stitched them inside his own blanket and waited. When they stole his blanket, he pretended to be asleep. And when the culprits fell asleep, one of them draped in my blanket, one in Elias’s, Elias crept over and pulled the thread out that he’d closed his blanket up in, drizzled treacle over the fellow’s face and hair and clothes, and snuck back into his own hammock. He was asleep within a minute.”

  Juliette narrowed her eyes. “What happened?”

  “When the fellow’s watch came, he flung his blanket aside, and a cloud of feathers billowed into the night, falling all over him and sticking to the treacle.” Frederick laughed, remembering the way lantern light had ringed the falling feathers in yellow light as they floated every which way, mocking him. “He was picking feathers out of his hair for three days. And our blankets mysteriously reappeared in their rightful hammocks.”

  She laughed, and it was good. Music in the dark night. “I can see it,” she said. “That was Elias, sure as the sun do rise.” Her smile met his.

  It was good to remember his friend this way—for this part of Elias was no less true than the choice he made in the end.

  Juliette sighed. “He did not often speak to me of life on the ship.”

  Frederick leaned forward, resting his chin on hands fisted around themselves. If he could but keep this moment for her, stretch it out long, for her. “What did he speak of?”

  She shook her head, smiling, her cheeks creasing with warm remembrance. “Dreams. You knew him. Surely he filled your head with the same dreams. Dreams of the farm. Never did a man dream such grand dreams for a sheep farm.” Her eyes creased into a gentle smile. “Do you know he thought we would one day supply wool for King George?” She shook her head. “And always, above all, that ridiculous dream he got in his head to make for the Windward Isles.”

  Their laughter sobered at the mention of the land that had meant so much to him, swayed his choices—and in some ways, perhaps, taken his life.

  “Do you know how we met?” She raised her eyes, rolling a pebble between her finger and thumb.

  Frederick searched his memory. “Do you know, for all the tales he told me, he never recounted that one.”

  She smiled. “It was my fault.”

  “You say that like it was a catastrophe.” He meant to offer it as a jest, to lighten her heart. But a pensive look flashed across her features.

  “I do wonder sometimes,” she said.

  He reached for words to amend, to invite the tale. “He mentioned that your father became like a father to him.”

  “Aye, he did look out for him when he was small. But after that, when he was older, he tumbled into our lives again. I was on the roof, you see.”

  He froze, every sense suddenly fixed on Juliette. The roof was his place.

  He cleared his throat. “Wh-which roof?”

  “The spring cellar,” she said, as if it should have been the only apparent answer. “I used to go up there sometimes, to be away from things. To be closer to the clouds.”

  He pictured her there, across the pastures, him upon his roof to be away from things, closer to the stars. Perhaps she was not as foreign a being as he had judged her back then.

  “I was meant to fly that day,” she continued. “I’d been watching the gulls off the cliffs, and decided that if they could do it, why shouldn’t I? I dug through our attic to find something for wings. The only thing I could find was an old pair of Father’s long johns. I
snipped and stitched and patched until I had the most horrific looking pair of threadbare wings a body ever saw, and I climbed up to the top of the roof from the hill that covers behind it, and—”

  “You talked sense into yourself and climbed back down?”

  “Clearly you did not know young Juliette well.”

  He laughed. “A body can hope.”

  “Well, she jumped.” Her eyes were wide, her words rounded, emphasizing.

  “So you did fly.”

  “If by fly, you mean, ‘nearly squash the boy dashing by to bury smuggled beans in the woods beyond,’ then yes, I did fly that day.”

  Frederick studied her. “He broke your fall.”

  Juliette nodded. “Though he used to say I was the one to break his fall. Him dropping the outlawed things in order to take me up. Always seein’ a deeper meaning in things, he was.”

  “You broke his fall,” he said with conviction. He would affirm that for Elias until the day he died. “Though you gave up your flight to do it, you broke that fall.”

  She smiled sadly. “That’s just it, though. I don’t know that I gave up the flight. I guess I would say that was the place the flight began, that life with him.”

  Frederick studied her, captivated. What he would give, to set her to flight once more. “I have an idea,” he said, offering a hand to help her up, walking her back toward the tunnels. “Meet me tomorrow morning, back at the Jubilee.”

  thirty-eight

  Frederick had worked the night through, securing rigging and making sure it was safe. It had been long since he’d done this himself—not since he was a powder monkey, really. He now paced the deck with the stowaway in his arms, laughing aloud at the open-mouthed smile she saved just for him. “Where is your mum?” he asked. “What’s taking her so long?”

  “What’s taking me so long are these.” Juliette emerged from the captain’s quarters. “It’s been a deal of time since I wore something like this,” she said, tugging at a rope that cinched the old trousers tight around her waist.

  Frederick tried to stifle a laugh but could not.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing,” he said, regaining composure. “It’s just been a deal of time since I saw you in something like that. Last I saw you in trousers, you were ten years old and had just finished piloting Mr. Swain’s cutter.”

  “Just an imp,” she said.

  He recalled the way her hair had stuck out from beneath her cap, her freckles setting green eyes vividly afire. “A captivating imp,” he said.

  Her cheeks grew rosy at that. “Now. What are we doing?”

  Frederick set the stowaway down in the barricade he’d fashioned for her of crates, where she set to a string of happy cooing as she played.

  “Up there.” He pointed to where the crow’s nest—the half not used for the cradle—was lashed afresh to the mast. “There’s something up there you should see.” He offered his hand there on the rigging, and she only looked at him, head tilted as if he had lost his last bit of sanity.

  “Offerin’ help to the damsel, are ye?” she asked, a twinkle in her eye. “Have ye forgotten which of us sailed this old girl here to begin with?”

  “Right.” Frederick laughed. “I won’t tell you how long it took me to get to where I didn’t flop like a fish from the rigging.”

  She laughed, genuinely enjoying herself. It seemed so, anyway, and he prayed it to be true.

  “Come on, then.” He led the way, she racing up the netting beside him. He sped up, giving her a challenge, and the look of sheer delight on her face was priceless.

  At the top of the rigging, he gripped a rope. It was a line running from the main mast nearly to the bow. Half the length of the ship, from crow’s nest to deck. The beating in his chest grew louder, both from exercise and anticipation.

  She was all curiosity now. Something in the way the corners of her mouth turned up . . . it seemed hope, too, might live there.

  “When we first met, you told your father the day you were mistress of the land would be the day you could fly.”

  She narrowed her eyes, searching her memory. He watched as she landed upon the conversation from the day of the mud fight. “How do you recall such a thing?”

  “You said it,” he said, dropping his voice. “I remember everything about you, Juliette.”

  Her study of him made him self-conscious, and he moved on quickly. “You’ve married the master and have no home. You are mistress of the land and live beneath it. Your child shall have a home there, if ever I can find a way back, find a way to make our name right for her again. But until then . . . there is yet one thing I might do.”

  She waited, and he slid his hand behind her back, wrapping the rope gently there, feeling her against his arm and using every bit of self-control not to pull her closer. He unfolded her fingers, pressed them closed about the rope.

  “Fly,” he said.

  She took the rope with a wary look in her eye. “You’re mad.”

  “At sea we called it skylarking,” he said. “You’ve the trousers for it. If you take hold with your knees, the rope shan’t burn your hands. But just in case . . .” He took her hands. They were cold, and could it be—was she shaking? He looked around, noticing the torn sail hanging limply beside them. Picking it up, he tore one strip and then another. He reached out his hand, pausing before his fingers brushed hers, seeking permission in her eyes.

  She swallowed. The slightest of nods. His fingers touched hers, and they were surprisingly soft. She, the wind in human form, was human, after all. He slid his palm beneath hers, lifting it, and began to wrap. Layer overlapping layer, until the ragged sail cloaked her hands, readying her for flight. He clasped her other hand and did the same, then, her hands in his, wrapped her fingers around the rope. Her hair brushed his chin, and her small form was warm next to his. His arms, which had cradled her babe but had never so much as brushed her shoulder, ached as if they were near home.

  And they burned then, as he stepped back instead. Slowly.

  When she looked over her shoulder, girlish anticipation on her face, he nodded. She shuffled her small feet close to the edge of the platform, her shoulders raised as she filled her lungs . . . and in an instant, she was gone.

  He nearly slammed himself across the crow’s nest, to see the wind in human form take flight. As he watched her closing her eyes, smile spreading, the world seemed to slow. Her hair flew behind her as her hands and knees skimmed the rope that guided her toward deck, her spirit soaring.

  The aching in his arms grew, spreading deep into his chest as he clambered back down the rigging to meet her.

  Frederick knew not what he expected. A smile, he hoped. Perhaps one of her conviction-laced declarations about her flight.

  Never in a thousand years would he have dared dream of encountering a Juliette whose entire trouser-clad, wild-haired being seemed to drink him in as he approached.

  But she did.

  He slowed, meeting that gaze. Daring to let the depth of longing in his soul, hidden painstakingly for so long, to show at last.

  Without a word she stopped, toe-to-toe with him. Wordlessly waiting, eyes sparking—air between them sparking, too.

  Time stopped there in the cave as Frederick circled her slowly, deliberately in his arms. And when she did not pull away—when, indeed, she entered into his embrace until he could feel his wife’s heartbeat against his own—he lowered his lips to hers.

  Here they were. Two souls, buried alive beneath the earth, beside the sea, in a place of nowhere—an empty cave that felt impossibly full as Juliette took flight where there was no sky.

  This was a place of impossible.

  And what a beautiful impossible it was.

  thirty-nine

  2020

  Twenty-one days. Twenty-one days of her thirty permitted had passed since Lucy had gone before the committee, full of hopes and fully convinced the Jubilee lay at the bottom of a sea trench. And a mere three days since the de
arest friend of her heart had taken her into his arms . . . and right into his heart.

  So much had changed, not the least of which was that she seemed connected, somehow, to the Jubilee. On a professional level, yes, but it was more than that. Looking back, it was clear her parents had been dogged in their commitment to give Dash and her a strong foundation to open their minds to seemingly impossible things being possible. Why? And why had a painting of the sea stacks from Edgecliffe been stowed beneath their floorboards?

  Was it crazy to think her attachment to the Jubilee had not been a coincidence, that they had been planting seeds all along, watering them through their stories?

  She had left her cozy “home” in the chill of the early morning to walk among the ruins again. Sheep’s bells and gentle bleating mingled with gulls were sweet sounds for pondering.

  A footfall sounded behind her and she turned. “Sophie,” she said, surprised.

  The woman stood in chaps and riding boots, her hair pulled back into a long braid. She had a timeless sort of beauty about her, one that belied the rugged strength she demonstrated every day running this farm.

  “I saw you out walking,” Sophie said.

  Lucy could not read her voice. It sounded gruff, as usual, but the woman held out a red plaid wool blanket. “It’s a cold morning,” she said. “You’ll be wanting that.”

  She turned to go.

  “Sophie.” Lucy stopped her, not quite sure what she wanted to say. “Thank you. For the blanket. And . . . for letting me stay at the farm so long.”

  Sophie nodded. She lingered, as if she had something to say, too.

  “You be careful,” she said.

  Lucy looked around at the ruins. They didn’t seem treacherous, but Sophie knew better than she. “I will.”

  “Good. That’s good. And . . . be careful with him.” She nodded toward Dash’s tiny house in the distance, tucked beneath the ancient yew tree.