The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)
Heidi Heilig
DEDICATION
To my father, from whom I learned to love to read,
and to my mother, from whom I learned to love to write
CHAPTER ONE
On a warm December day in 1884, the Temptation was leaving Hawaii, as well as the nineteenth century, and her destination was entirely in my hands.
At least, it was in my hands metaphorically speaking. Although I’d spent the entire morning poring over the maps in the captain’s extensive collection, I hadn’t yet been able to decide on a time and place for us to visit next. I always plotted our routes, and it didn’t usually take so long. But today was different—today was special. Today, my father had finally weighed anchor on the past, and the future unrolled before me, vast as the Pacific.
It was a heady thought, even for a time traveler. Just yesterday, I hadn’t been certain I had a future. But when Slate had renounced his quest to undo my mother’s death—and thus, my own birth—the burden of an uncertain fate had lifted away. An infinite freedom had flooded in to take its place. I might go anywhere from here. The horizon was bright and boundless; there was nothing to hold me back. It was a thrilling luxury, and strange—endless choices, and all of them mine to make.
“Is that our next map, amira?” Kashmir’s voice pulled me back to the present—Kashmir, the one thing I was certain about. He’d been watching me work, perched backward on the captain’s chair. The breeze through the deadlights stirred in his dark curls; for a moment, my hands itched to brush them out of his eyes.
Instead, I ran my fingers over the surface of the tattered map I held. The Fastitocalon, the giant, mythical sea turtle that ancient mariners often mistook for an island—that is, until the moment it woke and dove under the waves, dragging foolish sailors down with it. “It’s intriguing,” I said with some regret, refolding the leather along the creases. “But much too mythological.”
“Too mythological?” Kashmir laughed. “I never thought I’d hear you say that!”
“Well.” I couldn’t help it—I glanced back over my shoulder. Kashmir followed my gaze to the bunk. Blake Hart was still sleeping there, his face paler than usual; that was the blood loss. The young aristocrat from Honolulu had nearly died last night, taking a bullet meant for me. Thank all the gods for the healing spring. Blake’s presence aboard the ship was a reminder that my choices had consequences—I had to temper my excitement with caution. “It’s not just about me.”
Before Kash could respond, the captain’s voice floated in through the open door. “Nixie?”
At the foot of the bed, Billie the beagle lifted her head at my father’s call, but I ignored the both of them in favor of the rolled parchments in the cupboards. Someplace more historical might be less alien to Blake—after all, he’d never before left Hawaii, much less his own timeline. Here, Paris at the fin-de-siècle. But wasn’t that rather glitzy after nineteenth-century Honolulu? Not to mention drowning in absinthe and opium, which presented a different sort of danger. It was only this morning that the captain had thrown his box of pills and potions overboard. Best not to steer us back to that port. I slid the map back onto the shelf.
“Are you looking for someplace perfect?” There was humor in Kashmir’s voice—it was an old joke between us.
“You know there’s no such place. But—”
“Nixie!”
“Just a minute, Dad!” Turning back to the maps, thoughts collided in my mind—France and artists and islands—ah, yes. The South Pacific, 1901. “Some places come close.”
Kash stood to look over my shoulder—near enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin. I swallowed, trying to keep the map from trembling. It was a lovely one, labeled in French and decorated with a fanciful drawing of a kraken. No . . . I squinted. Wasn’t there a Tahitian octopus demon? Rogo-Tumu-Here . . . that was him, there, his many arms wrapped around the compass rose.
“Not another island paradise!” Kashmir rolled his eyes, and I bit my lip. Though I knew he was only teasing, our time in Hawaii hadn’t been spent lounging on balmy beaches under sunny skies. We’d been coaxed into an act of piracy there—a plot against the crown in exchange for the map my father needed. And in the fallout, we’d nearly lost the ship, the map . . . and each other. But that was all behind us now. In Tahiti, we could rest. Recover. And make new plans.
“Hopefully this version of paradise has fewer metaphorical serpents,” I said at last.
“I suppose I can work on my tan there,” Kashmir said, flexing his golden arms. “I hear it’s the custom to pearl dive nude.”
“Are you considering a career change?”
“You have to admit, the uniform is attractive.” He winked outrageously and I blushed, grinning. “And who knows?” he added then. “If I pick enough pearls, maybe we can afford our own ship someday.”
“A ship?” I blinked at him. That had been our plan—to set out on our own, to point our prow toward the far horizon, steered by the winds of fate. That was only yesterday, before my father had set me free, before I’d known that he still needed me near. But the thought was no less tempting now. “Someday.”