The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(14)

The bridge was crowded with joggers and bikers, tiny dogs fighting their leashes, and women with red wire carts selling mangoes carved in the shapes of roses. I bought one, to try to take the bitter taste of ash from my tongue. Nix finally stopped in the shade of the Manhattan tower, out of the way of the traffic. “You brought your sketchbook,” she said to Mr. Hart—not a question, but a suggestion. “Give us a moment?”

“Certainly.” He pulled his pen from behind his ear and sat in the shade of the pillar as Nix came to stand beside me at the rail. I offered her a bite of the mango. She accepted.

“God, that’s good.”

Side by side, almost touching, we traded bites and watched the ships: the brunch yachts coming in, the sailboats going out. I could smell the sun in her hair. Together we finished the mango; the nectar clung like perfume. Still she did not speak, and I did not prompt her—it seemed we were both summoning our courage.

My empty hands fluttered, useless; I longed to stroke her arm. Instead, I strummed my fingers along the row of locks fastened around a steel cable. They were brass and silver, old and new, pink and yellow and green—there must have been a dozen to a foot. They continued down the bridge, fastened to eyebolts and lampposts, rods and fences. Some had hearts drawn on them, others had names. I hefted one of them—an old iron thing, tarnished, antique—and slipped my picks from my pocket, for something to do. Nix snorted.

“What?” I glanced at her sideways. “It’s not like someone can steal the bridge.”

“They’re not for security, they’re symbolic. Couples come to the bridge and attach a lock to signify their love. Then they throw the keys into the water.”

“That’s foolish.”

“The authorities think so. Apparently a bridge railing collapsed under the excess weight. That was in Paris. City of love; it’s ironic. At least no one was hurt.”

“I wasn’t talking about engineering.” I probed the lock with hook and rake. There was a click, and it came free in my hand. “See? It’s an imperfect metaphor.”

“A weight too crushing to bear?” She shook my head. “It seems apt to me.”

“Interesting.” I lowered my gaze to the lock. But why was I hiding? I hooked the lock around a belt loop and clicked it shut. Then I raised my eyes to hers. “Love has only ever buoyed me up.”

“Joss said I’m going to lose the one I love.”

Misery stole her breath; she spoke no louder than a whisper, and it took a moment to understand. There was a long silence, the seconds measured in the beat of my heart at the base of my skull. “How?”

“The sea. Lost or drowned. She tattooed the fortune on Slate’s back. I’d hoped he’d only misremembered the translation, but . . .” Nix shook her head.

I tried a disdainful laugh, though it came out like a croak. “Fortune-tellers! I knew a few, back in Almaas. Vague predictions, just like that one. They were a waste of good entrails.”

“Kash—Joss was a Navigator. Whatever she knows, it’s already happened in her past.”

“Our lives are before us, not behind.”

“That depends on where you’re standing on the timeline.”

“What of free will?”

“Some people don’t believe free will exists.”

“Some people don’t believe in demon octopus, either. And did she mention when?”

Nix bit her lip. “No.”

“Then it could be years!” I said.

“Or hours,” she countered.

“Even if she’s right, you know the poem.” I looked into her face, hopeful. “‘’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.’”

“The only people who say that have never seen what loss looks like.”

The implication took my breath away. I stared at the water again, glittering in the sun like a broken mirror—bad luck, bad luck. “You forget, amira. Before I came to the Temptation, loss was all I knew.”

“How could you bear it?”

“Nothing lasts forever. Not even sorrow.”

She only shook her head, and her eyes were faraway—she was back at the ship, back with her father—and I kept picking locks, tossing them, one by one, into the river.





CHAPTER FIVE


The boys and I returned to the Temptation in the buzzy warmth of the afternoon. The black hull of the caravel shimmered in the heat off the asphalt, and the sun was like Hephaestus’s hammer, striking sparks on the anvil of the water. A headache had wormed its way behind my eyes; I was certainly dehydrated, but it was easier to focus on the pounding at my temples than the ache in my heart.

The conversation with Kashmir could not have gone more poorly. I cringed at the memory of my thoughtless words. He had known more loss than I could imagine—but my father was a daily reality too stark for me to ignore. Slate had loved and lost, and it had ruined him. How could I follow in his footsteps?

Then again, how could I ignore the pull of my own heart? This, too, was a loss . . . only a slow torture instead of a sudden shock, stretched on the rack of longing.

I dragged myself down to the galley to stash the pastries in the icebox. Then I leaned against the counter and drank deep drafts of musty, lukewarm water from the barrel in the corner. The walk had left me exhausted. Or was it the nightmares I’d been having? The last three nights, I’d woken, drenched, from a dream where I’d followed Kashmir over the side and my father had thrown me an anchor rather than a buoy.