Mystic Memories (30 page)

“Not really. There is just something about the melody that strikes a chord in me.”

As he went on to hum the tune a second time, Cara smiled at the vibration of the sound in her ear resting against his chest. There was almost a cozy, buzzy quality to it. Her eyes closed. Her mind drifted. She saw sanguine images of a summer afternoon in the late twentieth century. “You are doing it again,
lauaʻe
.”

Cara smiled at his telepathy. “What do you see?”

“Boats. All sizes of them, with smooth white hulls. Some with sails, some without—how odd.”

“Those are powerboats. They have engines inside them.”

“Hmm—interesting,” commented Blake. “It appears they are on a waterway in a sheltered harbor that I believe might be in Connecticut.”

The images vanished. She jerked her head up. “How do you know?”

“Having sailed the eastern seaboard, I know I have been at this place.”

“I haven’t. How could I have projected something from my mind that I never saw before? But you have!”

He shrugged. “You are the mystic with the answers, not me. I haven’t the vaguest idea where this scene came from. Perhaps you saw a book—”

“No, Blake. I think maybe it could be you who is sending the image to me.”

“Impossible. I know nothing about the strange powerboats. I merely recognized the deep river port of the Mystic River.”

“Mystic?” She sat up, her warning bells going crazy. “Are you joking?” She glanced at his serious expression. “No, I guess you wouldn’t be. Wow, this is giving me the biggest set of goose bumps! Don’t you see the correlation? The shipwrecked
Mystic
and the seaport of the same name? Oh, man, there’s got to be something going on here!”

“Cara, I do hate to dampen your enthusiasm, but there is a simple explanation. The Mystic River has a number of shipbuilding companies and is growing by leaps and bounds. I do not doubt there are at least half a dozen new vessels launched every year. Perhaps more. To have one of those ships christened with the place of her birth is not entirely unusual.”

“Oh . . . well, I guess maybe my imagination did go a little overboard. But I still think it’s weird you knew the location.”

“My lady, there is no lack for inexplicable happenstance where you are involved. I am learning to become somewhat blasé about it all.”

“You? Hardly.”

“Six months ago I would have agreed with you.” He reached out and stroked her bare leg. “But you have changed me.”

Her heart melted at the husky tone of his voice. She went back into his arms, stealing a few more minutes before Blake had to bring Andrew back to the cabin.

Chapter 19

T
hroughout the next twenty days, the
Valiant
fought wind, rain, snow, and sleet, battling her way to the Horn, only to fall back twice. Blake received reports from his first mate that some of the men believed Cara to be the bane of ill luck. However, he never held a moment of fear for her personal safety, as had been his initial concern upon her arrival in San Pedro. She had won too many friends during the voyage to be threatened. Yet when a sailor’s fate is in doubt, superstition can play a heavy hand.

Blake waited until Andrew was occupied elsewhere before voicing the worries of his crew over the fear of losing the ship, and their lives, in the arctic climate. Thankfully, her second sight did not perceive any grave mishaps. In her mind’s eye, she saw the
Valiant
sailing through the tropics, all hands in shirtsleeves again, which pleased him.

With confidence in her intuitive knowledge, Blake decided to push for one last try upon the Horn rather than turn back toward the Cape of Good Hope. During the most difficult days that followed, he often spoke with his crew, reassuring them of a safe deliverance from the master of the deep.

In the third and final attempt, they met with success on Wednesday, June 21. At daybreak of the summer solstice, the ship entered the waters of the Atlantic. Setting a northeast course around the Falkland Islands, Blake was greatly relieved to leave the Horn astern. As were the men. Their chanteys reflected the new and buoyant mood of the entire lot of them.

Two weeks later, the crew had cause to be in fine spirits again. Spending the Fourth of July under a clear sky and a warm sun, they realized that this particular Independence Day took on a special meaning after the harrowing weeks on the ice-shrouded brig. The
Valiant
stood nine hundred miles east of Rio de Janeiro, sailing a swift six knots with ease. As Cara had predicted, the men returned to their checked shirts and white duck trousers. Their Cape Horn rigs had been cleaned and stowed in their lockers for the remainder of the voyage.

Despite the festive mood, this was still a working Wednesday, not a leisure Sunday. There was much to be done to ready the ship for arrival in Boston Harbor so she would look good in the eyes of the shipowner and other observers as she came into port. In the days ahead, the ship would be scraped and cleaned and painted and varnished, inside and outside, from stem to stern, and from skysail truck to waterline. All the ironwork would be freed of rust and blackened with coal tar. Sails would be taken down and got up.

Holiday or no, Mr. Bellows expected a full day from the hands, encouraging them with the words “We’re homeward bound,” which always seemed to lighten their burden of work. As Jimmy polished the brass capstan, Andrew took a cloth to the ship’s bell. Cara found a quiet corner of the quarterdeck to “soak up the sun,” as she had called it in her own peculiar way of saying things. Nearby, Bud dozed in the shade.

When Blake wandered into the galley to escape the heat of the day, Keoni welcomed the opportunity for a brief respite from his own duties. After he set up a pot of tea to brew, he brought out his journal, opened it to the middle, and handed it to Blake. “I want you to see this.”

A large number of pages were filled with drawings. Blake glanced up. “Andrew’s?”

The
Kanaka
nodded. “He is quite an artist.”

“So it seems.”

Keoni pointed out the words printed beneath each rendering. “Since I teach him my language of Kaua‘i, he is teaching me his language of the future. That is a tel-uh-viz-in.” He enunciated carefully, indicating a square box with a picture drawn inside it. “And tel-uh-fone. And com-pu-tur.”

“And an airplane,” said Blake casually.

“Did he draw one for you, too?”

“No.” Grinning, he gave a light shrug. “I must be learning a little of Cara’s tricks.”

“What about this one?”

“A powerboat,” answered Blake, remembering the visions with Cara. “And that one is a steam train . . . a race car . . . a rocket.”

Keoni grasped his arm. Blake stopped and looked at his friend. “Yes?”

“You are not reading the words,
kaikaina
.”

“Of course I am.”

“No. Andrew wrote ‘engine,’ not steam train. And only a ‘car,’ not race car. A ‘space shuttle,’ not a rocket.”

An odd chill came over Blake, then a strange dizziness. As he studied the drawings, his heartbeat grew louder in his ears. Sights and sounds came rushing back to him. A different life. A different time. He remembered building plastic models of sailing ships. He recalled going to Mystic Seaport on several visits. With his parents! For the first time in years, he could see the face of his mother looking back at him from the front seat of the car.

“Great-God-in-heaven, Keoni . . .” Swallowing a sob of relief and joy, he looked at his Island brother. “I remember! My childhood . . . I remember everything! I was there. In the future!”

“
You
were lost in time like Andrew?”

“Yes!” He laughed and cried at the same time, grabbing Keoni and giving him a hearty slap on the back. “I’ll explain more later. Right now, I need to show this to Cara.”

“Of course. Go.”

Leaving Keoni in the galley, Blake went quickly to the quarterdeck. As he approached Cara, she slowly looked up from a book that lay open in her lap. She gave him a sweet, contented smile that warmed him more than the heat of the midday sun. Pausing in front of her, barely able to contain his enthusiasm, he thrust the journal toward her.

“What is it?” she asked, taking it from him.

“The pictures that Andrew has mentioned during our dinner conversations.” As she scanned several pages, he moved to her side and dropped to one knee to view the sketches with her.

“He’s definitely talented,” she remarked.

“Cara, I know these things.”

She turned and stared at him as if he’d grown another nose. “What do you mean?”

“I am saying”—he reached out and flipped pages randomly, pointing to one sketch after another—“
that
is a bicycle . . . a camera . . . a light bulb. And I am not reading the words, Cara. I recognize these inventions.”

He shot to his feet and paced nervously. His hand trembled as he raked it through his hair. “It all makes sense to me now. The haunting melodies of those songs. How it was that I knew about the Mystic River when you didn’t.” He whirled around and pinned her with his gaze. “Do you remember that morning in the cave?”

“It’s not something I could easily forget.”

“Remember the images of a picnic? Fireworks? Fourth of July?” He glanced around, came closer and lowered his voice. “That was the Bicentennial celebration in 1976. I was nine years old that summer. Those were
my
memories, Cara. Mine!”

He grabbed her hands and pulled her out of the chair, spilling the books to the deck.

“Do you know what this means?” He cupped her face between his hands, then kissed her quickly. Excitement raced through him. “You unlocked my past. I remember how I ended up on that ship when I was twelve years old. I—”

Blake caught himself before he made the mistake of saying too much in front of his crew. He took Cara’s hand and led her back to their cabin.

Alone together, he hauled her into his arms and kissed her once more, this time with deep gratitude and deeper passion. When he pulled back, she was as out of breath as he. Her cheeks were flushed pink. Her breath came hard and fast. He didn’t know which he wanted more—to tell her everything he remembered of his past or to make love to her in the heat of the moment.

He laughed at his giddiness and indecision. In a mad rush of words, he told her about his childhood home in Connecticut and his obsession with the old ships at Mystic Seaport. His last memory of that time period was during one of his many visits.

“Something happened aboard an old square-rigger,” he explained hastily. “And I found myself in 1815 aboard a ship with Captain Myers, sailing out of Boston.”

Cara gazed at him, tenderly touching his cheek. “And after what happened during that voyage, there isn’t any wonder your mind repressed all memory of the past. It was all too much for a young boy to deal with. In order to keep from going crazy, you had to forget everything.”

“But all of that has changed because of you. I owe you so much . . .” His mouth claimed hers as his hands roamed over her hips to her buttocks.

She leaned against the closed door and unfastened his belt. Their lips parted briefly. She beckoned him, “Share your memories with me, Blake.”

Kissing her deeply, he gathered her skirt to her waist while she freed him from the confines of his trousers. She stroked him fully. He touched her intimately. Then he entered her, pinning her against the wood with his body. Her arms wrapped around his neck. He lifted her legs, bringing them up around his hips, and impaled her with an urgency unlike any he’d ever known. His mind was devoid of all thought, save for the sensation of their flesh joined together as one.

In his final moment of surrender, he felt a love like no other in the world. Cara was his entire life. His breath. His reason for being. With a guttural moan of ultimate pleasure, he felt a burst of rockets and saw a glorious display of fireworks.

Exhausted and panting, he kissed her neck and murmured, “I love you, Cara. I never want to lose you.” He lifted his head and gazed into her dark eyes. “Take me back with you.”

“Oh, Blake, I want that more than anything in the world,” she said breathlessly, lowering her feet to the floor. “I’m just not sure if you can go back.”

“What do you mean? I’ll simply follow you.”

She shook her head sadly. “It would seem that simple. But it might not be. I came through a portal that apparently Andrew had found aboard the
Mystic
. But I don’t know how it appeared in the first place, or if it’ll still be there when we get back to the wrecked ship in California. And even if we can get back to the
Mystic
, we can’t recreate the fault-test explosions that might trigger the right electromagnetic disruption to correspond with the winter solstice.”

“You are speaking gibberish. I don’t understand.”

She kissed the corner of his frown, then dropped her head to his chest and hugged him to her, trying to explain the surveys for earthquake faults on the West Coast.

“It may very well be gibberish,” she added with a heavy sigh. “That’s the problem, Blake. All I can do is take it one step at a time. My gut instinct tells me the
Mystic
is the key. Outside of that, I have nothing else to go on.”

Blake could not help but wonder if her theory was incorrect. “What if there are hundreds of ways for the anomaly of time and space to be distorted? My own experience took place on the eastern seaboard, where such tests were not used, at least not to my knowledge.”

“My point exactly.” She moved out of the embrace and began straightening her clothing, prompting him to do the same. “The chances are slim to none that you can take the same path as Andrew and I. It is entirely possible that your only way back to the future may be through the same portal that brought you to the nineteenth century.”

“But I have no idea where that ship is now, or if it still exists.” His euphoria vanished as he realized he was no better off now than when he hadn’t known about his past. Whether he stayed or tried to return to the future, he would lose the woman he loved more than life itself. Putting aside his own feelings, he knew he must act in the best interests of Cara and the boy. “Our plans remain the same. After I am released from my duties, I will take you and Andrew back to San Pedro.”

Throughout the final six weeks of their voyage, Cara struggled with the uncertainty of their future, together or apart. Aware of Blake’s own dilemma, she knew what it cost him to stand by his offer to take them back to California. If only she could fulfill her commitment to Andrew’s safe return and still be able to come back to Blake. Better still—if only she could use her psychic abilities to find the passage to the future for Blake. But then, there was no guarantee where they each might end up or whether they could find one another if they were separated.

As Boston grew nearer with each passing day, the atmosphere of the ship became filled with quiet anticipation. Yet Cara was no closer to any answers to her questions. On the eve of their arrival in port, she asked Blake to take Andrew on deck for a little while so she could have some time to herself in the cabin.