The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(8)

“You’ll lose the one you love!” he shot back, but his tone was not half so harsh as the words. He swallowed. “To the sea,” he added softly. “It will break your heart.”

“Lost at sea?” In the silence, my heart pounded. Behind my eyes, I could see the white wake, when Kash had gone over the side. I stared at the characters, stark in blue ink, but they were indecipherable to me. “When?”

“I didn’t ask. I didn’t believe her, back then.”

“I don’t believe her either,” I said, as though saying it could make it true.

“Yeah?” Slate’s eyes narrowed. “Good for you.”

He closed his eyes and turned his face toward the wall. A pang of guilt hit me, but not as painful as the truth: Joss wasn’t some showy mystic making fake predictions. And she had clearly taken measures to make sure I’d know the fate she’d seen for me. But why?

Surreptitiously, I slipped my cell phone out of my pocket and snapped a picture of the tattoo; this way I could go to Chinatown and get it translated. Maybe there was more to it than what my father remembered. Maybe he’d gotten the wording wrong. Joss was a hard woman, but not cruel—she would not have sent this fortune just to taunt me. But what good was a warning if she had already seen it happen? Did she expect me to simply brace myself for the inevitable?

Or did she want me to try to change it?

The thought surfaced like a bloated body; bile burned on the back of my tongue. For years, I had watched my father try to do that very thing, dragging me in his wake, unsure whether each journey would be my last. After all, not even science knew what would happen if the past were to be remade. Would I wink out of existence? Would the present bend to a new reality? Or would the tapestry of history unravel completely?

All my life, Slate had failed to find the answer to those questions, dashing himself against the rocks, as ceaseless and uncaring as the tide. It was only after this last trip—after Honolulu, after he’d almost killed us all—that he’d finally promised to stop trying.

Was I fated to take up where he’d left off?

My mind churned, turbulent. I shoved my phone back in my pocket and looked for distractions—in the captain’s cabin, they were easy to find. Vigorously, I began to clean, clearing away the medical detritus, tossing Slate’s bloody shirt into the bin, capping the tube of ointment, closing the first aid kit. What was I going to do?

My first instinct was to tell Kashmir, but could a warning avert his fate? Or would Joss’s prediction only hang over his head like the sword of Damocles? And how would he view what amounted to an admission of star-crossed love, complete with an unhappy ending? How would we both have reacted today, had we known what Joss had predicted? Despair can drag a man down deeper than a kraken.

Swearing under my breath, I rolled the map of Tahiti, glaring at the flat-eyed demon decorating the compass rose. The beliefs of the mapmaker influenced what the Navigator would find on any map, I knew that. I should have paid more attention before choosing, instead of daydreaming about—about oranges. Any one of us could easily have died out there in the Margins.

But was the open ocean any safer? Kashmir could be swept overboard in a storm, or even slip on the pier and drown. Futures I’d never imagined played out in my head: Kash and me, leaving the ship. Moving inland. Forging a life far from the sea, far from my home. The thought made my chest constrict, as though I were deep underwater—I couldn’t imagine trading terra incognita for terra firma. But better to lose the sea than let it take Kashmir.

We’d never buy our own ship, then. So what would it be? A cottage? A flat? I could hardly build this strange life in my head; I had no firm foundation for it. And visions of global warming and massive tidal waves washed those plans away. If I’d learned anything from studying myths, it was that fate could not be cheated. I shook my head to clear it, wishing I’d never asked. What was the use of knowing? How could I ever protect Kashmir from all harm?

A soft knock at the door cut through my Gordian thoughts. I glanced at Slate, but he didn’t move; his breathing had slowed and deepened into sleep. So I went to the door and found Kashmir standing just outside.

At the sight of him, my heart leaped, a fish on the line. He’d changed out of his wet clothes and into something typically dashing—a pair of artfully ragged jeans and a white linen shirt, open at the throat. In the fading light, the fabric glowed against his golden skin. He’d even tucked a sprig of seaweed behind one ear, as though to thumb his nose at the sea.

As for me, the salt had made my curls unruly, and my clothes were stained with blood and ink. But when he saw me, he drank me in with his eyes as though I’d come to the door wearing a full-length gown—or perhaps as though I were wearing nothing at all.

The thought made my blood rush. I looked down at my feet before he could read it in my expression. “What’s going on, Kash?”

“I brought these up from the hold,” he said, rattling a plastic bottle of pills. “Antibiotics,” he added quickly, but I only nodded. “How is he?”

I shrugged. “Still alive.”

“Was that ever in doubt?” Kashmir gave me a grin. “I thought Joss said he’d live till he got back to 1868.”

I clenched my fists, and the map of Tahiti crumpled in my hands. “Joss said a lot of things.”

Kashmir’s brow furrowed; he cocked his head. “Is something wrong, amira?”