The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(12)
“To—what?”
“The map. I should have done it with the last one, but the idea came to me too late. Ach.” She flicked her hand over her shoulder as though a fly had buzzed her ear. “Yes, yes. To be honest, it was Ayen’s idea. But I would gladly do it.”
“Burn it?” For a moment my heart leaped at the idea, and I was shocked I hadn’t thought of it before. It would be so easy. Then I bit my cheek, ashamed. I had already taken her away from him once. “No. No, but thank you. I . . . thank you. I’m certain the map won’t work,” I lied. “None of them have.”
“Ah, well, good. Otherwise, I imagine you might worry.”
Downtown, a glass monolith seemed to blaze, catching the slanting sun as it crept toward the sea. She waited for a response, but I made none. Finally Bee dropped her hand onto my shoulder for a moment, then let it fall away. “I’m going to go organize the deliveries. You come too.”
Bee recommended hard work as a cure for any emotional turmoil. I followed her down into the hold, which still smelled of tigers, although the cages had been replaced by a handful of boxes scattered haphazardly. Instant coffee; my father lived on the stuff. A crate of toilet paper. Aspirin and iodine and antibiotics. Bleach and bamboo toothbrushes and toothpaste with fluoride.
We broke down the cardboard boxes and repacked their contents in the wooden chests we kept for the purpose. Then we piled all of the crates against one wall and scrubbed the hold till the teak gleamed. Bee was polishing the floor with beeswax when a box of vitamins tumbled down from the top of the pile; she scolded Ayen under her breath. The faint smell of honey filled the air. By the time we finished, I did feel better. And hungry.
“Must be nearly dinner.” I pushed my fists into the small of my back; the hatch framed a sky tinged with pink.
“Or past it,” she said. “It gets dark late here in summer.” At the mention of summer, she smiled like she couldn’t help it.
“What did you do?” I asked, but I didn’t bother to wait for her answer. She followed after me as I raced upstairs to the deck.
Kash and Rotgut had been just as busy as we had. A table was laid on the deck, and on the table, all the culinary delights New York had to offer: pungent halal chicken and rice doused in hot sauce, pork dumplings in Styrofoam clamshells, a cardboard box marked DI FARA’S PIZZA, pastrami sandwiches thick as dictionaries, creamy cheesecake covered with glistening scarlet strawberries.
Kashmir flung his arms wide. “Happy theft day!”
“Glad we stole you,” Rotgut added, raising a bottle of Brooklyn Lager in his bony fist.
I cast my eyes about, but it was only the four of us on deck. I lifted my chin as Kashmir patted the seat beside him—the one with its back toward the captain’s cabin. We dined like New Yorkers on the deck while Manhattan’s skyline shimmered in the water like the Milky Way and my father shut himself in the map room, conspicuous by his absence.
After the party, Bee watched while I made up an extra plate of food, but she didn’t say anything. There was no answer when I knocked on the captain’s door, but it was unlocked, so I let myself in.
The light was dim—he’d thrown bits of fabric over the lamps—and the room was stuffy, the heat raising the vanillin scent of old paper from the maps spilling from the shelves and cupboards lining the walls. Slate hoarded maps like a dragon hoards treasure: maps of every shape and shore, in parchment and paper, birch bark and Nile linen, kangaroo leather and sharkskin. There were maps punched in copper, painted on urns, and one scratched into the surface of a shelf mushroom. He even had Robert Peary’s 1906 map of Crockerland, a continent that enjoyed a scant seven years of existence before being judged a fata morgana; after 1914, it no longer existed on any map, nor anywhere else at all.
I needed air. I set the plate on the table and crossed the room, stumbling on a pile of books, to open the aft deadlights. The breeze ruffled the edges of the black curtains of the sleeping alcove. The captain dozed behind them, his newest map resting on his chest like a blanket. I clenched my fists to keep from snatching it away.
Instead, I went to the drafting table, where the map of 1981 lay, pinned down by half-empty coffee cups. I took the cloth off the lamp above the desk and leaned over the page, looking closely at the lines. The cartographer’s focus had been delineating New York neighborhoods, with each shaded in different watercolor and detailed down to major landmarks. I drummed my fingers on the table. Still, to my eye, there were no hints this map wouldn’t work.
Frustrated, I rolled up the map and shoved it into the cupboard with all the other dead enders. The rest of his Hawaii 1868 maps were there. There was no reason for me to worry that the new map would be different. I licked my lips and tasted salt.
No reason at all.
I closed the cupboard more noisily than necessary, but the captain didn’t even move. Since I’d started cleaning, I kept going. I picked up the books—myths, legends, history—scattered around the room like confetti, and returned them to their shelves. The dirty clothes I threw in the empty hamper. The caladrius’s cage was on the trunk; I filled a cup with water for her.
The bedsheets had spilled into a tangled pile on the floor. When I picked them up, I uncovered the box, lying open, displaying Slate’s most precious things: a block of black tar, a stained pipe and fresh needles, a bottle of pills, all nestled beside the map of 1866, the map of the time before I came along and everything went wrong.