The Reader (21 page)

The
Current of Faith
and the Floating Island

L
eaving Captain Cat and the bones of her cannibal crew behind, they sailed on. By the time they found the floating island, it had been over six months since they left the Paradise Islands, and they were feeling the effects of starvation. Even Cooky, for all his tricks with vegetable peelings and bone broth, couldn't ease the twinge in their guts. Some days Captain Reed sacrificed one of his meals to Harison, the ship's boy they'd picked up in the Paradise Islands, or Jigo, the oldest man on watch, but they were all going hungry.

So it was no surprise that at the sight of the island, the crew raced to prepare for landing. Reed stood at the prow while they flurried around him, with Jigo and the chief mate at his side.

The mate lifted his weathered face to the wet breeze. “Judging by the wind, I'd say we're headed straight into that storm,” he said.

Beside him, Jigo nodded and rubbed his hip with his knotty old hands. “It's a real beast, all right. Gonna last
through the night.” After a hard fall from the rigging twenty years before, he'd claimed he could predict the duration of a storm by the ache in his bones. As far as anyone knew, he'd never been wrong.

Reed squinted at the clouds, bristling with rain. “I don't like bein' moored in a storm any more'n either of you, but we ain't gonna last if we don't find something on that island.”

Jigo grunted and hobbled off to join the rest of the larboard watch.

The mate's dead gray eyes were unblinking. “Is it today?”

“Not today.” Reed took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “I'll leave Aly with you. Send her if you get jumpy. That storm comes down on us, and everyone better be back on board—and our cargo too.”

They were close enough to the island now to see it was teeming with plant life: trees twice the size of the ship and an understory of bushes and tall grass.

“You'll be cutting it close.”

“Ha!” Reed jammed his hat back on his head and grinned. “I've shaved closer'n this.”

The island was moving fast, but the
Current
was a match for it. They drew up alongside the shore, skimming past mottled beaches and fields of grass. Tiny horned deer loped through the bushes and birds like jewels flitted through the air. The wind kissed their faces and swirled around their arms. And suddenly, all across
the ship, the sailors let out whoops of delight, their laughter filling the sails.

The island was not an island at all. It was a giant sea turtle with a broad shell that rose a thousand feet out of the water, its enormous flippers churning the waves in great up-down motions like slow wing beats. Its massive head rose above the waves on a long white neck that gave way to smooth brown scales, ancient heavily lidded eyes, and a sharp beak that could snap a man in two.

Horse adjusted his bandanna. “Well ain't that something.”

Beside him, Harison murmured in the same awestruck voice: “That's something, all right.”

At a nod from the captain, Jaunty, the helmsman, began racing the
Current
against the turtle. He was cackling like a madman. None of them had ever seen Jaunty so excited about anything—head thrown back, molars showing. And the whole crew clinging to the rails, whistling and cheering.

Captain Reed scrambled up the bowsprit and stood there, poised over the hissing sea, howling for the pure joy of it.

And for a moment, they forgot how hungry they were. Because experiences like this were better than all the provisions they could have hoped to rustle up.

As they drew near enough to use their grapples, the captain mounted the rail. All around them was the sound of water—the murmur of waves onshore, the cacophony
of water falling from the turtle's enormous flippers as they dipped and rose in and out of the sea.

To be boarding a creature as old as that! Older than all the stories they'd ever heard. Older, maybe, than all the words in the world.

It was something, all right.

As soon as they landed, the captain sent them off. “Take what we need, but don't take it all,” he said. “This place is too pretty to be ruined by the likes of us.”

Pairing up, they spread across the island in search of provisions. The undergrowth was lush with tubers, wild onions, and spicy lettuce; the forest, with green and yellow fruit. Large rodents nosed among the roots and munched contentedly on fallen nuts.

In the underbrush, Harison bent to the ground and picked up a green tail feather with a curious curlicue at the end. Twirling it between his fingers for a moment, he tucked it into the top buttonhole of his shirt.

“My ma's been collectin' feathers since she was a little girl,” Harison explained. “She's got at least a hundred of 'em, but she can tell you the story of how she got each and every one. When I left, I promised to bring her feathers from all the places I'd been.”

The captain clapped him on the back. “I'll keep an eye out.”

As he and the ship's boy continued digging for roots, Camey and Greta stomped toward them. He had a boar
slung over his shoulders, and she clutched three dead birds in her hamlike fist.

Harison made a face as they approached. Reed chuckled.

Neither Camey nor Greta had made themselves popular with the rest of the crew. They kept to themselves for the most part, did only what was asked of them and no more. But they were his crew, and Reed treated them fair.

“
S
eems this job'd be easier if we could flush 'em out with fire,” Camey said, slapping the boar on the haunch. He was a good marksman: the animal had been shot clean between the eyes. “We done it plenty of times back home. Right, Gret
a
?”

“
V
acated their hidey holes right quick, the vermin did.” Greta grinned, her teeth yellowed from years of smoking. She ran her free hand through her greasy black hair, and a flurry of dandruff settled on her broad shoulders. “Like shootin' bottles off a fence lin
e
.”

“
T
his ain't like back home,” Reed said. “The island's a livin' thing, and livin' things protect themselves. You start a fire here, the island goes under, and you get nothing but a watery deat
h
.”

“
E
ither the sea or the sword, eh, Captain? That's what we got to look forward to.” She clicked her tongue ruefully and, noticing the dandruff on her shirt, began flicking away the largest flakes with her thum
b
.

“
O
nly a fool runs toward death,” Reed murmured,
more to himself than to Greta. “Even if we run from it, we all lose that race eventuall
y
.”

“I ain't a fool,” Camey grumbled. Taking hold of the boar's legs again, he continued downhill toward the beach, muttering, “It ain't right, treatin' us like that.”

Clicking her tongue as if to say,
What can you do?
Greta followed, the dead birds flopping awkwardly in her hand.

“How long they been like that?” Captain Reed asked, looking after them.

Harison shrugged sheepishly and ran a dirty hand through his thick curls. “Since I can remember, Cap.”

“They're gonna be trouble if we don't reach the edge soon.”

After two hours, the rain began. The crew raced back and forth from the trees to the ship, bringing meat and eggs, heads of wild cabbage and casks of freshwater. Huge drops pelted the grass and the surface of the sea. The game disappeared, taking shelter from the rain, and the men began foraging for whatever they could find: blood-drop berries, hard-shelled nuts, flightless birds with white-and-gray wings.

Overhead, thunder rumbled. Lightning flashed deep in pockets of the sky.

Captain Reed began touching each of the crates and water casks before they were loaded. Even over the din of the storm, they could hear him counting:
six, seven, eight . . .

Harison and Jigo went off searching for more tubers in the woods.

The rain came down harder. Lightning lanced through the sky like a trident, and for a second the entire island was lit up in brilliant blinding light.

Drops of rain sparking in the black sky.

The turtle's fins like giant moving stones, coursing with water.

Dead deer shot and waiting to be loaded—sodden fur and limp legs.

Thunder. An orange blaze and a trail of smoke in the forest.

The lightning had set fire to the trees.

Reed gave the order to load up the remainder of the cargo and then raced up the hill and into the brush, searching for the rest of the crew.

Jules and Goro.

Theo and Senta.

Pair by pair, he sent them running back to the ship, until the only crew left unaccounted for were Harison and Jigo.

The rain came down in bullets, but it didn't quench the flames. Leaves fell around him like hot fluttering moths while branches withered to embers and ash.

“Jigo!” Smoke burned his throat as he dashed through the tangled bushes. “Harison!”

All around him the trees were alight. He could no longer hear the water—not the rain or the charging of
fins through the sea—only the snapping of flames as they gobbled the ancient trees and tender saplings.

He nearly stumbled over Jigo in the chaos. The old man was on the ground, trying to splint his leg with a wet branch. In the firelight, he squinted up at the captain, his eyes red from smoke.

“Fell.” He grunted. “This cursed hip.”

With quick fingers, the captain tied off the splint. “Where's Harison?”

The old man pointed up the hill with a gnarled finger. “Said he couldn't let 'em all die.”

Reed cursed. “Get home. I'll find the kid.”

As Jigo hobbled off toward the beach, Reed thrashed deeper into the forest.

The air flickered. Fire leapt from one tree to another, igniting the crowns of leaves. Branches snapped and fell, sending up clouds of sparks.

“Harison!”

“Cap!”

The boy was standing in the center of a clearing, his black curls streaked with ash. In his arms, he held his hat like he was carrying something precious inside. An empty burlap sack was draped over the opening.

Captain Reed grabbed Harison's hand—ignoring the boy's cry of alarm at the sudden movement—and yanked him out of the clearing. The fire licked at their hands and forearms. They raced out of the trees through bursts of smoke and sparks. As they broke
from the woods into the open field, lightning slashed across the clouds.

Together, Reed and Harison stumbled through the field. The slope was slick with wet grass, and they slipped and skidded, their feet sliding out from under them. When they reached the beach, the entire island lurched sickeningly beneath them.

Over half the cargo had been loaded, but the waves were pitching and the
Current
was straining at her moorings. The crew rushed over the beach, hauling the water casks and sacks of vegetables on board.

“I remembered what you said,” Harison croaked, folding the burlap back from his hat. Four sets of beady eyes gleamed in the shadows, and there was a soft fluttering of feathers.

Birds. Harison had been collecting baby birds. “I couldn't just leave 'em, sir.”

The island heaved again. They were loading the cargo as fast as they could, but they weren't fast enough. Even Camey and Greta, unusually silent, did their part. Loading and lashing. Bundling and tying. The shifting of the island grew worse as the fire crept closer.

All of a sudden, they heard the chief mate cry out over the storm: “Time to cut her loose!”

You didn't argue with the mate when it came to the
Current
. They grabbed whatever they could carry and clambered up the grappling lines to the ship.

Reed was the last man aboard. As he hauled
himself over the rail, the ship pitched sideways. The final mooring line broke. They drifted wide, the winds pushing them one way, the turtle swimming another, tipping sideways in the waves to quench the fire at its back.

The captain squinted into the rain. The deck was chaos. Some of the crew were on the yards, furling the sails; some of them, down below. Had they all made it?

As if in answer, the mate appeared at his side. Water ran into his cloudy gray eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was hollow: “Jigo isn't here.”

Reed flung himself against the rail, searching the waves for signs of his crewman. The last time he'd seen Jigo, the old man had been a bent silhouette limping into the flaming brush. He was supposed to have made it back. He was supposed to be here.

But he wasn't.

The island was already disappearing into the rain, the skeletons of trees smoking against the sky. In the water, the lost animals paddled their little paws and searched for land, but one by one, they went under.

Jigo was out there somewhere. Drowning in the water or stranded on the island. Maybe he was watching them sail away at that very moment, gut-sick and full of dread, knowing he'd die out there alone, with no one to burn him or remember his name.

Harison was crying. He still held his hat with the four little birds inside.

Reed wiped his eyes. “I saw him. I sent him back to the ship. I
saw
him.”

Lightning lit the sky and flashed on the serrated sea, but Jigo wasn't there, and the water revealed nothing.

“She warned me,” Reed said.

I
would never leave you behind.” Sefia placed the green feather between the pages and closed the book.

Archer prodded the edge of his scar. In the lantern light, a smile passed across his face like a wisp of smoke.

It was still a couple hours before dawn and the air was cold and calm, filled with the dreams of sleeping men. Soon, the cook would send the ship's boy to the hold to fetch a link of sausage or a slab of pork. His approach meant that it was time for Sefia and Archer to put out the lamp, pack themselves back into the crate, and will themselves to sleep until night came again. They had lived this way for five days and were determined to continue doing so for as long as they could. Neither of them complained. It was better than death or slavery.

Archer pulled the door of the crate into place and curled up. In the close space, they lay face-to-face, knees touching.

Sefia ran her hands along the edges of the book, fingering
the leaves that protruded from the pages, until she found the soft blade of the feather Archer had given her. A green feather, like the one Harison had picked up on the floating island, for his mother.

Her own mother had had no interest in collecting anything of any sort—not shells or buttons or shiny stones. No, her mother loved things that lived. She used to spend long hours in the garden, weeding and sowing, pruning and picking, her neck arched elegantly as a bird's, with her black hair coming loose around her face. She often smelled of damp, rich earth.

Once, when Sefia had asked why she loved gardening so much, her mother had sighed and sat back on her heels. Her shoulders slumped, as if she were tired, though they were only a few hours into the morning. After a while, she answered, “There's enough death in this world. I want to help things grow.” For a moment her brown eyes were radiant in their sadness. Then she smiled and brushed Sefia's cheek, smudging her with dirt.

It had been eleven years since she died and sometimes Sefia couldn't remember her face, but she remembered the texture of the needle-fine lines on her mother's hands, the smell of the soil.

She wiped her eyes and smoothed the tip of the feather until it was a sharp point. The book always stirred her up inside, dredging her memories. It brought them back. It made them real.

While her mind wandered, she began to tremble. She was cold; her skin, clammy. Her breath came faster. Something was wrong. Her fingers groped through the darkness; her legs
twitched. Everything inside her was screaming,
Run! Run! Run!
All of a sudden she felt small and afraid.

Because she could smell the spiteful scent of hot metal.

A bright, tangy smell that buzzed between her teeth. She saw flashes of the day Nin was taken: The woman in black. The shadow of a voice. Nin staring at her through the leaves.

No,
she told herself.
I am not there. I am on a ship. I am with Archer. I can feel him next to me. I am with Archer.
As the flashes faded inside her, she opened her eyes and sat up.

Archer was awake too, sitting upright, tense and alert. But he didn't know. He hadn't been there. She thrust the book into her pack and shoved past him into the hold. The smell was worse. It made her head ache. The yellow light of a lantern flickered on the crossbeams. On the stairs, someone was muttering, “If it's not butter, it's bacon.” The ship's boy. “Bacon, bacon, bacon.”

Couldn't he smell it? Couldn't he sense it? Someone was going to die.

But she could stop it. She had to try.

Drawing her knife, Sefia dashed out from between the crates in time to see the ship's boy at the foot of the stairs, holding a lantern, his mouth opening as he saw her appear, and then the black shape behind him, the flash of a blade.

“No!” she screamed.

The ship's boy turned—too late. A strangled cry, cut off at the end. Blood spurted onto the floor.

He crumpled like a piece of paper.

Behind him on the steps was the woman in black.

The curved sword.

The cratered face.

The ugly dishwater eyes.

Her.

The woman smiled in recognition and opened her arms wide, beckoning to Sefia with her gloved left hand.

Sefia tightened her grip on the knife.
Do it,
she told herself.
For Nin.

But while she hesitated, the ship's boy lay on the floor clutching the side of his neck, red leaking from between his fingers like water from a broken dam.

Kill or die.

Him or her.

A choice you couldn't unmake.

Sefia fell to her knees and pulled the bandanna from her hair, pressing it to the boy's neck. He clasped at her hands and gulped. His eyes were wide and scared.

Archer lunged past her, drawing his knife. He almost reached the woman, but her blade flicked out. He jumped back, bleeding.

Sefia could hear them moving, the quick impacts of their arms and hands. But the knives made no sound. Blood pooled through the cloth, between her fingers. “I'm Sefia,” she said. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. The blood came quicker. “Shh,” she said, “it's okay. I'm here with you.”

The tempo of the fight changed. She glanced up. Among the stacks of crates and kegs, the movement of it was so fast it looked like a dance, a complicated quickstep of feints and counters, with the blades flickering like sparks between them.

There was a shout from the landing above, something unintelligible, a kind of animal cry filled with anger and fear, and
then someone was kneeling beside her. He smelled like spices and cooking grease. “Press hard, girl,” he said. The man ripped off his apron and bundled it under her hands. “Harder.”

She was pressing so hard she was afraid she might strangle the boy, but the blood was coming up too fast.

“He needs the doc. Stay with him.” Then the man was gone. Red seeped into the apron. She pressed harder.

“It's okay,” she said, looking deep into his glassy, fearful eyes. She could see golden ripples of light pooling around him. They dripped from the corners of his eyes onto his cheeks, leaked through the folds of cloth at his neck. She blinked and began to skim through the chapters of his life. The churning spirals of memory made her sick, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that someone knew him, understood him, was with him.

His childhood flashed past her, his adolescence in the Paradise Islands sailing skiffs and spear hunting with his friends, the birds whistling on his mother's porch, and then—

She knew who he was.

For a second she wondered if she'd slipped into the book, if she and Archer were now bound for the edge of the world and the strange starving days ahead.

She shook her head.

The ship's boy was older than he was in the book, but he had the same black curls, the same wide-set puppy-dog eyes. But this was not the book. This was real. And he was dying. And then she saw something darker, colder, with red lights blinking in the deep. It loomed up out of his life like the shadow of a building falling over you in the cold afternoon—a building you
do not want to enter, though you know you must. The boy was afraid. And she was afraid for him, afraid of the dark and the cold and the red lights. She blinked and came out of her vision gasping.

The ship's boy stared up at her. The corners of his eyes were wet.

“Don't die.” She brought her mouth close to his ear and willed the blood to stop streaming out of him, to turn back, to stay inside him where it belonged. “Don't die, Harison.” Then even his blood was golden and glowing, filled with little pinpoints of light, like stars, slowing down, trickling out of him like the turn of constellations across the sky. She watched each bead of light fall leisurely out of him, with aching slowness. Each bead of his life.

• • •

A
cross the hold, Archer slashed at the woman's face, his knife flickering in the lantern light. The woman deftly stepped aside and cut him across the back of the arm. He retreated. His arm stung. His head was buzzing with the hot smell of metal. The lowest deck was packed with cargo, forming narrow walkways in the hold. Not much room to maneuver. Easy to get trapped.

Then the woman was attacking, slashing, stabbing, Archer just barely evading the seeking blade. It whispered past his skin.

They parted.

The woman waited, her knife hooked downward, her gloved left hand raised to protect her neck.

He attacked again, stabbing this time, but she trapped his
wrist with her knife and pinned his arm, slashing him once across the abdomen. Blood spilled out of him.

He pulled, pivoting away, his wrist twisting in her grasp. His blade flashed out, cut into her skin. And then they were facing off again. The black sleeve of her blouse was torn. He checked his arm, the gash across his stomach. Twice. She had cut him twice. He couldn't be sure, but it felt like a long time since anyone had done that.

The woman's pale gaze flicked past him to the crate where he and Sefia had been hiding. She wanted the book. He flipped the knife in his hands, copying her, holding it like an ice pick. He wouldn't let her past him. In the background was the reassuring lull of Sefia's voice. “Shh,” she was saying, “it's okay. I'm here with you.”

But it wasn't okay. He recognized a wound like that when he saw it. The boy wasn't going to make it.

The woman attacked. But just as she had done to him, he hooked the dull edge of his knife over her wrist, trapping her arm, and twisted. Her eyes widened. He got in a slash across her stomach before she bounded out of his reach again.

Her mouth split open, revealing small white teeth. She was laughing: a soft, breathy “Ha-ha-ha . . .” like puffs of smoke.

Then they were engaged, knives flicking in and out, parrying, dodging, opening little slits on each other's hands and arms and legs. It was the quickest fight he had ever been in; each attack came faster than he could think, and it was only the swiftness in his limbs that allowed him to keep up with her.

They paused, facing each other, breathing hard. How long
had it been? Minutes? A few seconds? Someone else came running down the steps, footfalls like hammers. “Press hard, girl,” came a gruff voice. “Harder.”

The woman ran in again, slashing sideways at his knife hand. He parried, but the next attack didn't come from her blade. She brought her gloved fist crashing into his rib cage. He had expected the blow, but he didn't expect it to knock him to his knees. Something broke. The wind went out of him. He lashed out with the knife as he hit the ground. The woman danced out of reach. The floor spun beneath him. He'd never been hit so hard. He pushed himself to his feet.

The woman flexed her fingers; the leather glove creaked.

She rushed forward, attacking again, furious and impatient. A slash nearly got his knife hand as he stepped backward. Another almost took out his leg. His back hit something hard and unmoving. Barrels. He had been driven up against them by her attack. Then her gloved fist was coming at him and he knew if it struck him the bones in his face would shatter. He ducked. A barrel splintered behind him. A great crashing sound filled the bowels of the ship. For a second her entire left side was exposed. He slashed at her neck. The tip of his knife nicked her throat, but she didn't retreat. She attacked again. And again. And again.

He barely had enough time to react. The injury to his ribs slowed him down. She kept landing her knife. He lost count of how many times she'd cut him.

Again.

And again.

And again.

She was so fast he didn't realize until too late that she'd disarmed him. His knife clattered to the floor. She could have finished him off then, but the entire ship was waking up. Time was running out. Soon the rest of the crew would swarm belowdecks and then it wouldn't matter how fast she was. There would be too many.

He got one good look at her face; she was bleeding, bright red spilling from her brow down into her eyes. And then she was running, leaping up the steps, disappearing into the shadows of the deck above.

He grabbed the knife and leapt after her—over the boy's unmoving body and up the steps. Maybe Sefia called after him. He didn't hear.

There was a shout above him, but he couldn't identify the words. He reached the lower deck. Through the slats of the stairs he saw a huge figure charging toward the woman in black. She raised her knife arm. She was going to attack. Archer recognized the downward slash of her arm.

His knife was solid and well-balanced in his hand.
Good for throwing.

He flung the knife.

It sank into her forearm, mid-swing, lodging deep in the muscle. She didn't scream.

In the second it took him to dash around the hatchway, she pulled the knife from her arm and struck at the big man, who staggered back. She darted past him into the open air.

Archer paused to grab the man by the forearm and haul him
to his feet, and then he leapt up the steps to the main deck, where he got his first breath of fresh air in days. It was cold, and the ship was wreathed in fog. Men swarmed out of the forecastle. Their cries were sharp in the night.