The Girl from Everywhere (36 page)

“You can’t sail the
Temptation
.”

“I won’t have to. The girl is the expert, you said it
yourself.” He hefted the bag and threw me an appraising glance.

“No,” my father said, his voice low. “No, no, no. Take the ship then, take the money, leave her. Just go. We’ll stay here. Come, Nixie, come here.” Slate opened his arms, but Mr. Hart jerked the gun toward the captain.

“Stay where you are,” he said to me. “He wouldn’t be the first man I’ve killed, and shooting is a lot easier than drowning.”

I swallowed, but my mouth was so dry. Kashmir had the vest, but the revolver was pointed at my father’s face.

Slate did not quail. “Don’t do this,” he said, his face pale with rage. “Don’t take her from me, because I will kill you if you do. I will hunt you down and I will kill you, no matter how long it takes.”

“Captain!” Kashmir said, but Mr. Hart only smiled.

“So you do understand,” he said. “Why a man would kill for love.” Mr. Hart cocked the revolver.

“Wait!” My voice broke, but I’d found it again. “Wait, please.” Mr. Hart half turned his head, though his eyes—and his aim—stayed on Slate. “I’ll take you wherever you want. Just don’t shoot. Whatever you need.” I racked my brain. “Diamonds. In Arabia. And, uh, gold.” The gun dipped a
little, and his eyes flicked to me then. “Gold from the Cibola. El Dorado, you know El Dorado?”

“It’s real?”

“I can take you there. Or Carthage. In Carthage they pay gold for salt.” Tears stung my eyes and I knew, then, just what my father felt: I would do whatever it took. “I can take you anywhere. Anything you want. Only let them live. Please.”

Mr. Hart stared at me for a long moment, then he nodded once. “Throw down your weapons.”

“No!”

“Dad!”

Mr. Hart shrugged, as if in regret. He raised his gun again, but I was out of ideas.

Kashmir wasn’t. His hand flew to his knife, and Mr. Hart whirled around—a shot rang like a bell in the cave and I smelled cordite and iron—but it was not Kashmir who stumbled back. It was Mr. Hart.

He clutched his right shoulder with his left hand, but he did not drop the gun as he stared, as we all did, at Blake standing at the mouth of the grotto. The boy stepped forward heavily, into the circle of our torchlight, as though his own feet were made of clay.

“I followed you.” Blake was breathing hard, but his gun was still high in his trembling hand. “I heard it all. Let her go.”

Mr. Hart glared at him while red blood bloomed like a boutonniere on the shoulder of his linen jacket, but then he swung his own hand back up and pointed the gun at Blake. “Put it down, boy.”

“You first.”

Neither moved, and then Mr. Hart smiled again, as bitter as truth. “Just like your father,” he said, and he fired.

Blake fell back into the dark, and I leaped on Mr. Hart’s back, wrapping my arms around his throat. He swung me around as Kashmir came toward him and my legs connected, knocking Kashmir against Slate as I tumbled to the ground.

Mr. Hart pulled up his arm and fired at Kashmir, square in the chest, and I rose, grabbing for Hart’s wounded shoulder and squeezing as hard as I could. He cried out and dropped the gun, but he managed to reach up with his other hand and twist his fingers in my hair until tears stood in my eyes and my own hand opened. Then he grabbed the bag and ran, dragging me along behind him.

We stumbled over Blake’s prone form on the path; he was still moving, reaching out, clutching at Hart’s leg. Mr.
Hart yanked out of Blake’s grasp, but I heard the boy’s words, soft and raspy:
“Get down.”
I tried, but Mr. Hart still had me by the hair. He pushed me into the forest along the narrow path.

“Move!”

Behind us, feet slid through the loam—it must have been Slate—but then came the sound of something ahead: snapping branches and the conch shell and the feet, marching. Our warriors . . . had we brought them this close? But Kashmir had fallen in the cave, so who was sounding the conch? Torchlight shimmered between the trees, blurring in my teary eyes, and I understood what Blake was saying.

“Get down,” I wheezed, sucking in air. “Get down!” Slate heard me, and his footsteps stopped, but Mr. Hart wouldn’t listen.

I closed my eyes and covered them with my hands, blind as he shoved me forward. And then he stopped.

There was a chill and a stillness; then Mr. Hart released my hair. I sagged to my knees and pushed myself down to the earth, among the loam and the leaves. My palm was sticky against my face, and I smelled the tang of blood and something else, a whiff of cold earth and damp stone and dry moss, but I did not look, I did not dare. Blake had
warned me about the Hu’akai Po. The silence stretched, but it wasn’t silence; it was the sound of a hundred souls holding their breath.

And I could no longer hear Mr. Hart.

I reached out blindly, tentatively, groping through the empty space beside me where he had just been, but I found nothing. I was relieved; I was appalled. I closed my fingers around a handful of dead leaves and crushed them in my fist to stop my hand from shaking.

I lay there shivering, water seeping up from the soil and into my clothes, along my forearms and elbows and knees as I pressed myself into the ground, until the mournful conch sounded once more, until I felt the rhythm of two hundred feet passing me by and fading away, until the Hu’akai Po vanished beyond all hearing and the only sound was my heart beating in my throat.

And my father’s voice.

“Nixie?”

I crawled over to him, staying low, finding my way with my hands, too scared to open my eyes. I touched his hand and he grabbed my fingers, crushing them in his own. “Are you all right?” I whispered, afraid to speak too loud, and he wrapped me in his arms.

“Oh, God, Nixie.” His breath was hot on my neck as he clutched me tight. “I thought I’d lost you.”

“I’m still here,” I said, half to convince myself.

“And Hart?”

“Gone. They took him, Dad. The Night Marchers. They—” I couldn’t finish the sentence; Slate had tightened his embrace, squeezing the air from my lungs. But there was nothing more for me to say.

“Good,” he murmured. “He’s lucky it wasn’t me.”

I heard footsteps then, and I couldn’t help myself, my eyes flew open. It was Kashmir, and he was propping up Blake, who had blood seeping through his coat. I scrambled to my feet. “Are . . . is he—” I started, but when Kashmir stopped, Blake slumped to his knees, and I didn’t wait for an answer to the question I couldn’t bear to ask. I pulled off Blake’s jacket and groaned at the sight of the blood soaking his side.

Kashmir handed Blake over to Slate, wincing through his own pain, but he shrugged me off when I reached for the big powder burn on his stomach. “Yes, yes, my shirt will never recover,” he said, pushing my hands away and holding his side like he had a stitch. “Come, we’ve got to get him to the ship. See if we’ve got something to help him. Where’s the gold?”

I glanced back at the ground—the hollow where I’d
huddled beside Mr. Hart—but the bag had disappeared too.

Slate propped Blake up with his shoulder, and I wadded his jacket and held it to his wound as we stumbled and slid down the mountain. I kept an eye out for torchlight along the way, half afraid the Night Marchers would return, but they had disappeared completely. We moved as quickly as possible, but by the time we reached the waterfall, Blake was pale as bone in the white moonlight, and despite my efforts to staunch the blood, his shirtfront was soaked with a slick like black ink. He wouldn’t make it to the ship; he wouldn’t make it down the hill. And even if he could, I had no idea if the mercury would kill him or save him.

Why had I let the caladrius go? I couldn’t take my eyes off Blake’s face, and I remembered how he’d blushed, his cheeks bright pink, when he’d first shown me this spot, this sacred place he loved so well. My heart pounded above the sound of the waterfall, roaring in my ears.

“Wait,” I said. “Stop. We have to stop.” Slate stumbled to a halt, and Blake fell to the ground. I gazed up through the pearly clouds of silver spray drifting down to the round mirror of the pool. The healing pool. “Here,” I said, desperate for hope. It had to work. There was no other option.
“Bring him here. Lay him in the water.”

Slate lifted Blake and staggered to the bank. He didn’t ask the questions that were in his eyes—he was breathing too hard to speak—as he knelt down to lower Blake gently into the pond.

The white of Blake’s shirt seemed to glow in the reflected moonlight, but soon his blood clouded the pool. My heart sank. I reached in—the pond was frigid, and I pawed at the water, at his shirt, at the blood as it drifted like mist. I found the ragged hole in the cloth and reached in, gingerly, fearfully, but the skin beneath was smooth and whole.

I started laughing, crying—joyful, hysterical—and I pulled Blake from the water and clutched him close, soaking the front of my shirt. Then Kashmir’s hand, warm on my shoulder; I reached up to grab his fingers. “Come,
amira
. We have to go.”

We met our warriors back at the clearing, and they fell in line behind us. Blake was still unconscious, but with Slate and me supporting him, we managed to make our way through the city to the boat. We were joined halfway back by Billie, who nipped at my ankles hard enough to draw blood before Kashmir picked her up, whining and wriggling, and carried her clamped under his arm.

A few brave souls were peering out their windows as we passed through town, so I pulled Blake’s gun from his jacket pocket and fired it into the air; shutters and doors slammed as the sound of the shot echoed in the street. As we boarded the junk, I heard shouted commands from the vicinity of the palace. Had the Royal Hawaiian Guard managed to escape their barracks? We cast off as quick as we could, dumping Colonel Iaukea unceremoniously on the pier—but even under full sail, we seemed to inch toward Hana’uma as dawn began to paint the sky pink. Still there was no pursuit from the American warships in the harbor, and I wasn’t surprised. Mr. D and his friends were well connected.

I clenched my fists as I watched the city grow smaller and smaller behind us. The league had won, though they hadn’t gotten the money. Of course the annexation of Hawaii had never been in doubt—but now I was complicit in the monarchy’s downfall. I would be reminded of that every time I had to bail the bilge.

Blake was still so pale. I checked his breathing, although Billie, who lay pressed against his body, growled when I came close. His chest rose and fell, the motion shallow but steady. Beneath the rags of his shirt, there wasn’t even a bruise.

Kashmir approached, walking gingerly. He’d stripped
bare to the waist, and he was still holding his side. Peeking out beneath his fingers was an ugly weal, red and purple.

“Oh, Kashmir—” I reached toward him; I couldn’t help it.

“Ah ah ah!” He shied away from my hands, but then he smiled wryly. “I’ll be fine. My worthless carcass will recover.”

“Don’t, please.” I put my hand to my mouth, then down to the pendant at my throat. “Don’t joke about that. Not right now.”

His smile softened. “Of course,
amira
. I’ll be fine,” he said again. Then he turned his gaze to Blake and raised an eyebrow. “Damn. He looks better off than me.”

“Yes, you were both very brave,” I said, suddenly angry at the memory of my fear. “And very stupid!”

“Not as stupid as he was. I had a vest on.”

“It’s not a competition!”

“What’s not a competition?” Blake said, his voice soft and slurred. I swallowed the bitter taste on my tongue. Billie half stood, then sat again, then stood, her tail vibrating.

I knelt down beside him. “Nothing. How do you feel?”

He tried to sit up, but I pushed him down gently. His hand crept up along his ribs. “How . . .” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I thought I was . . .”

“The healing spring,” I said. “The one you showed me.”

“The spring? It works?”

“It does. On your map, at least.”

“On . . . my map?”

“Yes. The one you drew . . .” My voice trailed off. Did the healing spring exist before Blake drew it? Had he brought the Night Marchers into being? Was this version of Hawaii the real one, or only a fairy tale he’d told? “I don’t know, really. Just rest now.”

He nodded vaguely. “I’m cold,” he said.

“Here.” I picked up his stained jacket from the decking and shook it out, pulling it up to his chin. Then I saw it, in the pocket where he’d always kept his sketchbook: a tightly folded piece of paper, one corner brown with blood.

“I took it from the fireplace,” he said. “It was atop a pile of kindling.” I unfolded it gently. It was creased, but it was whole.
HAPAI HALE, BLAKE HART, 1868.
The map of my mother, and I, the anchor. The page trembled in my hands. It was so fragile; I could destroy it in an instant. Kashmir met my eyes, a question in his own, but I wasn’t ready to answer. I folded the map carefully and slipped it into my own pocket.

“Where are you taking me?” Blake asked then.

I hesitated. “We’ll make sure you get home.”

“Home?” he said. “Where is that?”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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