Because It Is My Blood (Birthright #2)(29)

Simon Green and I had decided on the shipping vessel for three reasons: (1) because the authorities, if they bothered to look for me, would probably go to the airports, the train stations, or even the passenger-ship docks, (2) because my family had many connections with exporters, which made it easy to find a shipping vessel that would harbor me, and (3) security was notoriously lax on cargo ships—I kept my head down and no one even asked to see Adam Barnum’s ID.

The only problem with this plan was that a passenger on a cargo ship was basically cargo. The first mate pointed me to a room set up in an opened rusty metal container with a cot and a bucket and a box of old-looking fruit—still, it was fruit!—and no windows.

“Not exactly luxury,” she said.

I took in the room. It looked slightly more commodious than the Cellar at Liberty.

The first mate eyed me suspiciously. “Have you no luggage?”

I lowered my voice to what I thought was a plausibly boyish register and informed her that my things had been shipped in advance. They hadn’t, by the way. I was a person without a single possession.

“What takes you to Mexico, Mr. Barnum?”

“I’m a student naturalist. There are more plant species in Oaxaca than anywhere else in the world.” Or so Simon Green had told me.

She nodded. “This boat doesn’t actually have docking privileges in Puerto Escondido,” she told me. “But I’ll have the captain stop the boat and one of my crew will row you the rest of the way there.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“The journey to Oaxaca is about thirty-four hundred nautical miles, and assuming a vessel pace of fourteen knots, we should be there in approximately ten days. Hope you don’t get seasick.”

I had never been on an extensive sea journey so I didn’t yet know if I was prone to seasickness.

“We should depart in about forty-five minutes. Gets pretty boring out there, Mr. Barnum. If you want to come play cards with us, we do Hearts in the captain’s quarters every evening.”

As you might expect, I did not know the rules to Hearts, but I told her I would try to play.

As soon as she was gone, I closed the door to my container and lay down on the cot. Though I was exhausted, I could not sleep. I kept waiting for the sirens that meant I would be discovered and returned to Liberty.

Finally, I heard the ship’s horn. We were leaving! I lay my shorn head on the flat bag of feathers that must have once been a pillow and quickly fell asleep.

VI

I AM AT SEA; BECOME FAR TOO ACQUAINTED WITH THE BUCKET; WISH FOR MY OWN DEATH

FOR THE TEN DAYS OF MY JOURNEY, I did not have opportunity to play Hearts or any other game, aside from a game I affectionately dubbed Race Across the Container to the Bucket. (Yes, readers, I was seasick. I see no need to trouble you with the details except to mention that, once, I threw up so hard I sent my mustache flying across the room.)

This current plague did not allow me to sleep very deeply, but I did have hallucinations or, I suppose, waking dreams. One vision I had revolved around a Christmas pageant that was being staged at Holy Trinity. Scarlet was the female lead, of course. She was dressed like the Virgin Mary and she was holding a baby with Gable Arsley’s face. Win stood by her side, and he was supposed to be Joseph, maybe; I couldn’t tell. He was wearing a hat again and instead of his cane, he had a staff. To one side of him was Natty, carrying a box of Balanchine Special Dark, and next to her was Leo with a pot of coffee and a lion on a leash. Somehow I was the lion. I knew this because of my shorn mane. Natty scratched me between the ears, then offered me a piece of chocolate. “Eat one,” she said. And I did, and a second later, I was awake and running across the room again, to reacquaint myself with the bucket. I had no idea what I was throwing up at this point—I hadn’t eaten much of anything for days. My abdominal muscles hurt and my throat was terribly sore. It was lucky I had cut off all my hair because there was no one to hold it back for me. I was friendless and a fugitive, and I suspected there was no one more dejected and wretched in the whole world than Anya Balanchine.

VII

I BEGIN A NEW CHAPTER; AT GRANJA MAÑANA

AN ENDLESS TEN DAYS LATER, we arrived in Oaxaca, where, along with a sailor named Pip, I was transferred into a small dinghy.

As we approached the shoreline, my seasickness began to resolve itself only to be replaced by a homesickness such as I had never known before. It was not that the coast of Oaxaca lacked charms. The rooftops were dotted in promising shades of orange, pink, turquoise, and yellow, and the ocean was bluer and better-smelling than any water you’d find in my hometown. In the distance, I could make out mountains and forests, green, so green, with icy swirls of white. Were these swirls clouds or mists? I did not know—the icy swirl was not a meteorological phenomenon that we city girls were familiar with. The temperature was 67°, warm enough that the chill I had experienced since swimming to Ellis Island ten days ago at last began to fade. Still, this was not my home. It was not the place where my sister lived or where my grandmother and parents had died. It was not the place where I had fallen in love with the planet’s most inappropriate boy. It was not the land of Trinity and of buses with my boyfriend’s father’s picture on the side. It was not the land of chocolate dealers and drained swimming pools. No one knew me here and I knew no one—i.e., Mr. Kipling and Simon Green’s plan had worked! Maybe the plan had worked too well. I could die in this boat, and no one would care. I would be a mysterious body with a bad haircut. Maybe, at some point, a local cop would get the idea to use that tattoo on my ankle to identify me. But that was the only thing that identified me, this body, as Anya Balanchine. That regrettable tattoo was the only thing separating me from oblivion.