The Girl from Everywhere (The Girl from Everywhere #1)(76)

“What? No.” He clasped behind his back and walked toward the rail to stare at the sea. “No trouble at all. But I wonder . . .” He turned and came slowly back. “I wonder if you really needed that map.” He cocked his head, studying me. “This may be your native time.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Kashmir shift on his feet. I blinked. “My what?”

“You were born in . . . well, sixteen years ago or so. You belong in Hawaii. In 1884.”

“I belong here, Captain,” I said quickly. “Aboard the Temptation.” The response was almost automatic, and for the first time, something about it rang false in my ears.

“Nevertheless,” he said. “This may be what you find past the edge of every map. The place you return to again and again. This may be your home, whether you like it or not.” He watched me, as though waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say. I only stared out over the prow at the island as we approached. She waited for me, as patient as a mother.

We’d sighted a bay to the south of our position, and we pulled close enough to shore to drop an anchor. The north side of Oahu was lit by nothing but moonlight; if there were people living along the shore or in the deep valleys, they had long since put out their fires.

Somewhere, on the other side of the mountains, Blake was in his bed, his hands still stained with ink from the map he’d drawn. Was it only hours ago that I’d seen him? It felt like centuries.

After the ships were made secure, I stripped down to my underclothes and dove from the bow into the cool blue sea. The waves were silvered by the moon, but so different from the quicksilver sea of Qin’s dead kingdom. Diving in and out of the water, I felt entirely renewed.

Well, almost entirely. I couldn’t shake the sense there was something I’d missed in the tomb, a thought I’d almost had, a question I’d almost answered. I hated this feeling; my mind kept casting about and pulling up other thoughts in the process, and they swarmed around my head like flies.

I filled my lungs with air and rolled into a dead man’s float, my eyes closed, my ears below the waterline, trying to clear the distractions. I hadn’t seen Joss in the tomb, but she’d told me she had seen us. In 1866, when Slate first came to Honolulu, she must have recognized the ship, perhaps even before Slate came to her shop to sell his cargo . . . and to meet my mother. In 1884, Joss would soon be burying the crate, stuffed with the money she’d gotten from Mr. D, so she could uncover it in her youth. That, and a map of 1841. And an elixir as well, for her “condition.” She said she’d been poisoned; was it weeks of exposure to the mercury? Or had she lost hope just before our arrival?

Poisoned.

I remembered then the wharf rat I’d embarrassed by asking the meaning of hapai. Bubbles streamed slowly through my lips and up along my cheek.

Lin had been in her mid-twenties when she met Slate. She’d have been born in 1841, or thereabouts.

I lifted my head, the breeze cold on my face. Salt dripped into my eyes as I treaded water for a long, still moment. Then I plunged below the surface, twisting in the cool clean water, holding my breath until it hurt, until my lungs clenched like fists, until I could not concentrate on anything else.

I burst into the night air and took a painful breath that cleansed like fire. Then I heard a short laugh from above. I blinked away the saltwater; there was Kash at the rail. “You were under so long I thought you’d drowned!”

“No such luck!” I called back.

“I’m beginning to think I’ll never inherit that hammock.”

I climbed up the ladder at the stern. The night breeze gave me gooseflesh after the warmth of the water. Kashmir met me on the quarterdeck with a thick towel. His own hair was still damp, and he’d changed into a fresh shirt. He started to wrap the towel around me, then he winced.

“Your shoulder.”

I glanced at the ugly purple bruise and made a face. “You know, you shouldn’t spy on a lady bathing.”

“Reconnoiter is a better word,” he replied easily. “Besides, it’s not a bath unless you use soap. You should try it.”

“I thought I smelled something strange.” I sniffed him; he smelled of bitter almond. Then I squeezed my hair into the towel. “Maybe someday,” I said, starting toward the hatch, but as I stepped away, Kashmir caught my arm.

“Amira—”

“Yes?”

“Are you really all right? You seem . . . distant.”

When the answer came to me, it was not a lie. “I’m fine.”

His eyes searched mine. “I . . . you did very well at the helm. I am—amazed.”

Pride, like a mouthful of sweet wine. “Thank you, Kash.”

“The captain was wrong,” he called after me. “You belong on a ship.” But it very nearly sounded like a question.

I went downstairs to find fresh clothes. As I pawed through the trunk, I caught sight of the map of Carthage, waiting for me. I pushed a jacket over it. Then I dressed and took a moment to look at myself in the mirror. My own eyes stared back.

It was only when I was leaving the room that I noticed Swag was not in his bucket.

I refilled the pail with fresh water and put out another dish of pearls, but he did not return that evening, and at dawn the next day, I emptied the bucket back into the sea.