The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(53)

But he’d done it.

But it was impossible.

But there she was.

Joss had told Slate he would see Lin again someday—and so he had. A laugh clawed its way up my throat. I hadn’t known that I would too! We’d both thought it would be in Honolulu in 1868, on the map he’d sought all my life. The map he’d found and lost.

The map Crowhurst had taken.

My god.

And all this time, we had thought she was dead.

My gut twisted like a rag wrung out. What had I done, giving Crowhurst the map of New York?

I wrapped my arms around my shoulders—I was shaking; was I cold? And there was an odd feeling, or a lack of feeling, a numbness behind my ears and along my scalp and at the tips of my fingers. I was breathing much too fast. I closed my eyes and tried to slow down, watching colors like fireworks swirl and fade behind my lids.

“Nixie . . .”

I whirled around; Crowhurst put his palms up, placating. Though the bailey was wide, the walls were high, and I felt trapped with him so close. For a moment, I wanted to run again, all the way back to the ship.

Instead I pushed myself to my feet, thrumming like a mast under too much sail. “You did this,” I growled, starting toward him, fists clenched. “You stole her.”

“I saved her.”

“You what?”

“I saved her life! Nixie—”

“Stop calling me that!” My shout echoed off the walls of the keep.

Crowhurst took a step back, concern on his face. “She needed help,” he said softly. “Penicillin.”

I shuddered to a stop. The words made no sense at first. The emotion was still coming in waves over my head; I took a deep breath, trying to keep an even keel. “You saved her. . . .”

“We did. You and I.”

“Me?”

“You got the map into my hands, and I went back to help. Your own father couldn’t do it,” he went on. “He told me so the night we met. He said he didn’t want to risk losing you.”

“He said that?” My heart trembled in my chest—a bird against the cage. I had doubted him, but he had chosen me; in the end, he always had. “Did he . . . did Slate ask you to go to her?”

“He wasn’t in any sort of condition to make requests, but I saw a need. I recognized his pain. You must understand,” he said, his voice soft. “I lost my family too.”

I stared at him, not comprehending. “But . . . they’re still alive on your timeline,” I stammered. Why did he look away? “I read that, in the articles. They waited for you—they’re waiting. All you’d have to do is go back.”

His face paled, and I saw his throat move as he swallowed. But before he could speak, I heard my father’s voice. “Nixie?”

My heart leaped—my stomach churned. There they were, my mother and Slate, walking across the bailey hand in hand; it was as painful to look at them as it was to stare at the sun.

Still, I couldn’t look away. I could see, now, the parts of me that were hers—the curve of her lips was the same as mine when I smiled. The tilt of her eyes—looking into them was like looking into a mirror. She couldn’t have been more than a decade older than I; she’d been in her mid-twenties when I was born—when we’d thought she’d died, when I had saved her, or lost her, and all because I’d chosen to give Crowhurst a map.

An emptiness opened in my chest, like the tide pulling back the water before a tsunami, and my belly felt like a fish flopping on the wet sand. But my feet felt as though I’d grown roots. There were myths about that—girls turning into trees to escape some terrible fate. How long would I have to be still before I would never move again? But then my father reached for me, smiling. “Nixie. Nixie, come meet your mother.”

I tottered toward him on wooden legs; he took my hand and squeezed my fingers, and I was human again.

She had looked so small, next to Slate, but when I got close, I realized we were the same height. Her hand went first to my cheek—her palm was calloused. Then her fingers alighted on my shoulder, then my chin, like a butterfly, fickle. Her eyes bored into mine, with a deep curiosity that was terribly familiar. “Are you really mine?” she said then.

My spine stiffened and I took a breath to tell her that I wasn’t anybody’s, but when I opened my mouth, what came out was a sob.

Tears filled my eyes; I tried to wipe them away, but they flooded in, too fast to bail. My breath hitched in my throat, and I shuddered like the ship in a storm. A terrible weight crushed the air out of me, and sobs struggled up through my chest like bubbles from a rift in the floor of the sea. When she wrapped her arms around me, I clung to her as though she were a raft. The world spun inside my head, and fragmented thoughts popped up like flotsam from a wreck. She smelled like cream and incense. Her arms were cool. She was crying too.

Finally the tide of my own tears ebbed, and I blinked away the last of them. My face was hot and I felt strung together with loose twine; I lifted my chin and took deep, tremulous breaths. The others had followed them to the bailey, I realized—Blake and Kash, and Dahut too. Over my mother’s shoulder, I caught her yearning stare before she turned away. Distantly, I realized I had told her an untruth, though not on purpose—I had missed my mother after all.

The rest of the world faded into the background—my father thanking Crowhurst over and over, his modest replies. An offer to stay the night; the ship would be crowded, he said, and the walk to the dock was dark and cold. In response, Slate wrapped the man in a bear hug.