Chapter 3. Decisions
All my plans cracked and crashed around me as I thought over yesterday’s events. Izzy was going to end up in Bermuda but did it have to be this Izzy, right now? She was furious and rightly so. Whatever else happened on this trip I wanted to leave her with good memories, memories that would warm her at night and give her hope for the future.
I looked around at my ship and rubbed my hands through my hair and absently braided it back. This was one nightmare I had the power to wake up from. Sleep well, Izzy, I’m taking you home. You’ll wake up to the familiar skyline and I’ll let you be for as long as I can manage.
Someday Izzy would be walking around Bermuda in 1649 but it didn’t have to be this Izzy, right now. I lived and worked in a literal time machine. “Right now” was a fluid concept in my line of work.
The wind shifted on me as I changed course to the portal. I would not force Izzy into doing this. I don’t know how that journal got written but I would not force my sister into living this same absurd existence that I lived. This was as rough a start to a journey as I’d ever encountered and taking her home was the right thing to do. There was more than one way to get her to Bermuda in 1649. I could take her home, calm her down, and try again later.
The jib twisted and I regretfully got up on my bum leg to go yank it back into position. The damn canvas was caught in the foresail and I had to hoist myself up on the boom to push it into the wind. My shoulder screamed at me and I felt it open up and the bandage stick in the new bloodflow. Shit.
I jumped down without thinking and my leg collapsed. Shit! I limped back to the chair and breathed through the agonizing screams I locked up in my throat. Izzy needed to sleep and her ass would be right back up here if she heard me crying out because I’d busted all of her hard work open again. She might be onto something about getting to a hospital.
Sailing this overstuffed behemoth through the portal would be an ordeal. Explaining to my mother what was on the ship while her favorite daughter screeched her head off over what I’d done was going to be an ordeal. Having the patience to wait and see how and when Izzy gets swept back in time without my assistance only to land in Bermuda with a journal and quill in her hand was going to be an ordeal. There was no winning. There was just choosing your hard.
I would choose to attempt to salvage what was left of our relationship and get her feet back on dry land.
At this rate of speed it would be a two day trip to the portal. I could walk there faster. I shifted in my chair. My wounds were swelling and I couldn’t get comfortable.
Izzy had left the antibiotic pills by the helm and I picked up the small bottle and put a few in my hand. I had stocked these specifically for my sister. We were heading to a time of pharmacies and urgent care doctors, she wouldn’t need them now. I popped one and twisted the top back in place.
Solo sailing in this era was almost unheard of. No satnav, no autopilot, no weather reports or instrumentation to beep at you and wake you if there were danger. It was all celestial navigation and dead reckoning. Only a lunatic sailed alone. The fact that I attempted solo sailing and was successful at it, added to the fear I inspired in the merchant community. I was a woman, I sailed alone, and I was good at it. My name and my sails were infamous on the water. The men at Tavern Rock were justified in their fear of me.
Sailing alone meant no breaks, no cooking, and little sleep. I had a system of setting my watch alarm to vibrate after twenty minute catnaps, then staying awake for three hours, then another twenty minutes and so on until I reached my destination however far it may be. Even in the best of health it was a hard and arduous process. I raised the genoa to capture more wind and hopefully speed us along. My shoulder did not thank me and spots of blood started showing through the bandage on my hand.
By the time the sun set, I was feeling light headed and cold. I pulled on a jacket over my sweatshirt and set my alarm for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was not enough. The wind picked up. I was grateful for the extra speed but it cut through my layers and I shivered through the night.
When morning came, the sun beat down on my beaten up ass. My head was splitting and I was stiff when I tried to move out of the chair. I lasted only a minute to get up, recoil some rope, and collapse back in my chair. I kept liquids down but everything else came up. I was pleased at our speed (such as it was), we’d be at the portal by dinner.
Izzy didn’t surface. I thought I heard an occasional thump or clink from her cabin but I decided against disturbing her.
I’m kidnapped and I’m going to stay that way?
No, Izzy. You are going home. Once she could see planes in the sky and container ships in the shipping lanes, I’d go get her. Till then I’d let her rest and enjoy what vacation was left to her.
I continued to catnap through the day. Lack of sleep and my disregard of care had turned my injuries in a bad direction. I couldn’t get uncomfortable. My calf was swollen and I hissed and cursed any time something brushed against it. It was inflamed. The primary measures of the Fountain zapped away at me but it was moving too slow. I wasn’t taking good enough care of myself. There was nothing for it though, I could only pour more coffee and pray that the trade winds stayed strong.
At the advent of the portal I began the process of slowing us down and prayed. The ship was full of explosives, my sister included, and the portal was not always a gentle place. I wouldn’t know for sure until we were inside it what the conditions were and that made me nervous. I was dizzy by the time I brought the ship to a standstill and didn’t realize what I was feeling until my head cleared.
I felt thunder.
The skies here outside the portal were clear, not a cloud horizon to horizon. Yet a rumble of thunder vibrated through me. I shivered and opened the cabinet door that housed the engine controls. Right up next to the entrance as we were, the tide pulled at my hull in a way I didn’t like. It produced a drawn and bitter feeling in my stomach. Though it was bright daylight, I could feel the impression of thunder through my bones.
The portal was a particular type of ocean current like the Gulf Stream or equatorial currents, only it coursed across time and space, not just the sea. Power created it and that power desired more power. It fed itself by entrapping lost souls in cataclysmic storms and ferrying them to places they did not want to go. I rubbed absently at the brand on my neck, the Nekydalleon. I’d been caught in just such a storm.
The silent thunder rolled through me again.
My ship was in no condition to battle the type of storm I knew to be raging through the portal right now. I heaved to, feeling new bleeds with every movement, then limped below. I had promised myself I’d leave her alone but I needed help with this decision. Her door was shut tight. I tapped lightly.
“Izzy?” I called, hoping I sounded non-kidnappery. “Izzy can I come in?”
No response.
I cracked the door slightly, she was asleep. Her room had a haze of leftover marijuana smoke, several bottles lay empty on her dresser. Her laptop was playing some simpering romantic comedy in front of her closed eyelids. She’d found some old reference books of mine and they were strewn over Maui’s lava lava wrap like a second comforter. Maui, my nickname for her former boyfriend, Fetu, would have been the best comforter of all. He wasn’t here though and from the looks of it my sister was barely here either. I would have to make this decision on my own. I slowly closed the door and grabbed a bottle of water before lurching back up the stairs.
Up on deck I could almost see the invisible storm raging just behind its invisible barrier. It pulled at me, tempting me to try my hand against it. My choices were different now. Risk a storm in the portal, or risk my sister in Bermuda. I rubbed at the brand on my neck. I would not put Izzy through that. I was not willing to risk Izzy’s life like that.
In this rare case, better the evil I didn’t know. Izzy was going to Bermuda.
The thunder boomed enough that I could hear it and feel the vibrations through my hull. I hit the engine start and brought us around. The battery gave out after an hour and I shut it down. I set my alarm for twenty minutes and passed out. We were officially en route to that tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic, now two days behind schedule.
Before I settled in for another night at the wheel I rewrapped my wounds and put on jeans and a t-shirt and my broad-brimmed hat. Izzy hadn’t found the significant gash in my leg, and I did what I could to keep it clean and stable. The change of clothes refreshed my perspective and revived me for another night of catnaps to get us across the leagues of barren ocean. I tucked the pill bottle away, cursing myself for having taken any of them. Now, if Izzy got hurt or sick, her supply was lower.
Bermuda. It was hard to believe this was finally happening. Bermuda and I had a difficult relationship. The place was crawling with Puritans.
The Try Your Luck was heavy and moving slowly, but we couldn’t be far, ten days, maybe seven if I caught a good wind. It was 1649. I still had time, not much, but some.
Late spring 1650 was when I was captured and burned at the stake right there in St. George’s Bay. The old burn scars on my legs itched, reminding me of the ordeal. The Fountain had kept me alive (barely) until the fire ate through the ropes binding me. Then I had run, sprinting on burned and blistered legs, flames streaking behind me, until I reached the bay and dove in. I swam back to my ship from there. As soon as I’d climbed aboard my ship I’d gone straight to the engine and revved it. My ship, captained by a charred briquette, left port with furled sails, no wind, snores of the devil (the engine) following it, and belching acrid hellfire (gasoline). It was 1649 now; I had a year until then. I still had time. I rubbed my scars and prayed that I still had time.
I would avoid the place entirely except for a few reasons: One, we were close to it; two, the excess cargo I got off that thieving rat bastard would be easily sold there; three, I had people on that island I wanted to see one last time. And four, the wheel of time dictated that Izzy would be in Bermuda in the summer of 1649 and therefore that’s where we’d be. By my estimation, we would be on the island for a week tops. Then I’d put that place in my rear-view mirror for good.
The next day I shivered in the beating-down heat. Even with my hat I was getting too much sun. I was hungry. I kicked absently at the empty box of cereal at my feet and picked at a stale cake. My shoulder and calf were stiff and swollen and getting worse. I gave up on trying to rewrap the wounds. I couldn’t touch them without getting faint. I couldn’t shower or bathe but managed to beat and scrub clean some of my clothes and hang them to dry on a line. I captained in a towel all day until something was dry enough to wear. Then I froze my ass off all night in the damp clothing. Nothing was ever really dry on a boat. I wrapped a blanket around myself and made some tea.
Izzy stayed in her cabin.
****
I have not been able to keep track of the time. The compass read true. I think we were still headed the right way. Everything hurt. This sucked.
****
By the time she emerged from her room I was in rough shape. My wounds ached and distracted me constantly. The little snack cakes had run out, and I was sunburnt to a crisp. Despite the equatorial sun, I was cold. My recent shore leave back in the 21st century had been longer than normal, and I’d lost much of my protective tan.
I didn’t feel well. I was living off a dwindling cask of water and some emergency protein bars.
I missed sleep. Catnaps while sailing couldn’t replace a real night of sleep.
I missed real food. Izzy and her chef-ing skills had spoiled me during her short time on board.
The safety rope dragged behind my harness as I checked the sheets and sails. The past few days I was beginning to hallucinate, seeing ports where there were none, smelling food no one had cooked, calling out to ships that blurred into the horizon. Yesterday I had almost walked off the boat and into the waves because there was a deli having a special on roast beef sandwiches just off my starboard rail. The safety line had saved me from going overboard.
The delicious smells were wafting towards me again, and I tightened the knot. A bowl of soup, my most glorious hallucination yet, appeared in front of me. I looked wistfully at it, not daring to blink and risk it vanishing. Bermuda was only another day or two out. I’d find some food and rest then. The bowl stayed faithfully at my side as I steered, and I thanked it for its company.
“Anne!” Izzy snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Hello? Answer me and eat the damn stew already!” She wrapped my fingers around a spoon for me. When had Izzy gotten here? Why were her fingers ice-cold? Was she sick? Wait, did she come through the portal with me?
“Did you make soup?” I managed to garble out of my dry mouth.
“Stew. And who the hell else would have made it?” she snapped at me.
I carefully dipped the spoon into the bowl and felt tears stream down my face as I tasted real, fresh, hot food for the first time in who knows how long. Eating this vision of a stew felt religious, sacred, sexual, intimate.
“Are you okay?” Izzy asked.
“What?” My god, I’d get this soup pregnant if I could.
“You are not okay.” She ladled more stew into my bowl, and I had to sit down and cover my face. I was sobbing so hard at the beauty of it all.
Izzy took the wheel and scanned the horizon while checking the compass. “Where are we going again?”
“Bermuda.”
“Why Bermuda?”
“To sell the guns. And the gunpowder.” My vision whirled as the calories entered my bloodstream and my muscles relaxed, knowing I wasn’t going to continue to starve.
“What?!?”
“We are going to sell it all in Bermuda.” Then we’d make a U-turn and head for the portal to return Izzy home. “I can’t have us navigating the portal on a ship full of explosives.” I wiped my eyes and took a steadying breath and shivered. I ached everywhere and was still a little dizzy but felt I could stand up. “Good soup. Thanks.”
“It’s stew.”
“That’s what I said.”
Izzy sighed the sigh of a patience-less woman begging the universe for an inch more endurance in her war against stupidity. “Why don’t you take a break? You look like you need sleep. And...more.” Her eyes scanned over me, and apparently I did not pass muster.
I was still in my jeans and t-shirt, but my shirt clung to my back where the blood was plastered to the bandage. The wrappings on my hand were stained and dirty from blood, sea water, and now stew. My leg was in awful shape, but the thick denim hid the damage from her critiquing eye. I’m sure she noticed more than I could see. I got pretty banged up in that fight. I brushed and beat at my pants to attempt to present a better image. It didn’t really help.
“No. It’s okay. I’ll be fine. The soup helped a lot. You don’t need to do this.” I was exhausted but wasn’t about to ask her for anything after what I’d just put her through. I put the spoon back in my bowl and wondered briefly why on earth she had cooked this for her kidnapper. Mutual survival was the only reasonable explanation.
“When was the last time you slept? Like, really slept? Have you been living on junk food this entire time?” She kicked at some of the wrappers around the base of my captain’s chair.
I tried to answer her, but she rapid-fired the questions and my brain was mired in pain and stew. My boat had always been so quiet. Did Izzy always talk this much?
“You look like you’re on death’s doorstep,” she continued her critique.
I had to laugh at that remark. I could knock knock knock on death’s doorstep all the livelong day, and that bitchy harlot with her scythe and cloak would never let me in.
“Why the hell didn’t you just heave to for a while so you could do what you needed?” Izzy finally took a breath for me to answer.
“I’m getting us where we need to go. I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” I laughed at my own joke.
“God, just move.” She used her impressively sharp elbow to knock me off the helm.
I crashed into the padded port bench. My head spun and my feverish body flashed at the sudden movement. I have to admit to being a little tired. I passed out.
****
The morning we were scheduled to depart, I stood in the shower turning the knobs from cold to hot and back again, over and over, luxuriating in the convenience of indoor plumbing and a large hot water heater tank.
“Anne, could you please not use all the hot water? I’ve got company coming over later. I’ll need a shower too.” Mom flitted down the hallway without waiting for a response. It was time to get out anyway. I pulled one oversized towel off the rack and wrapped it around my body and used a second for my hair. Such luxury.
I turned the sink faucet on and giggled at how easy it was to get water of any temperature any time of day, any time of year. I always missed that. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss…the things you never realize are near and dear to your heart.
Back in my room I toweled off and reveled in the air conditioning. I put my face right against the vent and breathed in the chilly, controlled air.
I smelled the laundry detergent and fabric softener on my fresh clothing. Then mourned a little bit for the brittle chips my soft clothing would turn into after a few months at sea.
While it was still wet, I braided my long hair back into two thick, tight French braids and welcomed back the reflection I was used to. While on shore leave I kept my hair down, clean, and dry since I had access to brushes and conditioner on a regular basis. While at sea, my hair was braided back and out of the way, covered with a wrap and brimmed hat. Deodorant, oh, my precious deodorant, but how I wish you’d been invented centuries earlier.
Down in the kitchen I filled up on anything with preservatives as my mother skittered and twittered at me about my nutrition choices and tried to clear away my Sugar Flakes and replace them with something that grew on a tree. I batted her away. Eventually, she alighted on the chair across from me with a mug of tea and a calculating look at my hair. She knew what my braids meant.
“How long will you be gone this time, do you think?” she asked.
“Izzy and I are planning the whole summer.”
“Izzy is really going with you?” She was honestly surprised.
“She made the decision.” Honestly, I was still surprised too.
“I’m just going to miss her is all.” Guess who she wasn’t going to miss. “You will take good care of her, won’t you?”
“Of course I will.”
“You’ll see she gets home safe to me?”
“I will.”
“Keep her out of trouble. She’s a good girl.”
“I will.”
“You promise? You’ll bring her back in one piece?”
“I promise.”
The tide pulled at the hull in an unfocused way and the motion woke me up. I couldn’t have been out too long. The wind blew lazily against lowered sails, and my sister sat at the wheel, unconcerned by the condition and direction of the ship. My heavy body tugged at me to stay still and begged me to keep my eyes closed. I wish I could go to sleep for several days. The primary measures of the Fountain buzzed and zapped against the fever like Lilliputians with tasers in my bloodstream; it promised a few more days before I gained ground against the infections.
The sun was low in the sky and a new batch of soup steamed in a bowl by my face. I ate it greedily and tried to express my thanks to Izzy around the hunks of carrot and beef in my mouth. My hand had been rewrapped. The bandage was clean, and the skin around it was clean too. My shoulder was rewrapped as well. I flexed it, trying to work the stiffness out of my muscles. How long had I been out? Not long enough. Breathing felt like a chore. I tried again to express my thanks, but the words were drowned by my current spoonful of soup.
“We need to talk.” Izzy didn’t acknowledge my garbled thanks.
I swallowed and tried to keep my eyes focused on her instead of the ladle that lay tantalizingly close in the pot.
“Okay?” Stay focused, Anne, you can do this. My eyes begged to close and bring me back to dreamland.
“Bermuda,” she started.
“Bahama,” I sang. “Come on, pretty mama.” Food really brought out the music in me. Also, that fever might have advanced more than I was admitting.
“Don’t you dare start singing,” Izzy said, but I knew there was a smile underneath her displeasure.
“Key Largo, Montego, baby, why don’t we go—”
“Anne! I need to know what to expect there.” Lady Buzzkill never appreciated my musical stylings even before I kidnapped her.
“It’ll be fine.” I brushed her off. “You’ll stay in the boat – for real this time – and chill until I finish the deals—” Shit. No, she needed to get off the ship. Okay, maybe she could put on one dress and go for one stroll for one hour. “ – then, if you want, we can do a little sightseeing for an hour before getting back underway. We’ll be out of there quick. Like a week.” I reached for the ladle, but Izzy beat me to it and rapped me on the knuckles. I almost cried. I could not stand much more pain or I’d crumble into a pathetic pile of sobbing sea captain.
“No. I don’t want to stay on this boat. I’ll find a hotel,” she countered.
Izzy then launched into a long list of boat grievances and unrealistic demands for accommodation in Bermuda.
Honestly, did she really think spas existed in the middle of the 17th century in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? No, Izzy, there aren’t any hotels. There are rooms above taverns. Most are occupied by whores, of course. Cabo aside, I don’t think she’d appreciate lumping herself in with that crowd. No, Izzy, this is a backwater colony that the entire seafaring European community used as a gas station grab-and-go turnpike toilet. No, Izzy, there are no good restaurants. This ship is the only really safe place. No, you won’t be safe all by yourself off of the ship. Haven’t we already learned that lesson?
The soup was cold by the time we reached a compromise we were both unhappy with: Izzy would stay at the least objectionable inn we could find, but I was hiring her a chaperone/guard who would watch her Every. Fucking. Step.
“And one more thing,” she said.
“For fuck’s sake,” I said under my breath, rubbing my temples. “What now?”
“I want you to take me home.”
“Bermuda—”
“After Bermuda. Promise you’ll take me home.” Izzy stood at the wheel with her hands at ten and two like the perfect A-plus student right out of Drivers’ Ed. Her eyes were on the sea, but her body radiated intensity.
This is what she’d spent all those days below deck building up to telling me. If the storm hadn’t been in the portal and we were halfway home…but we weren’t. We were here and we needed to deal with Bermuda. We’d be home soon enough, and she could continue her life, working all her jobs and playing with all her friends and having cocktail hour with Mom where they’d make blithe jokes at my expense between sips of bubbles and bites of microgreens.
“Izzy, it’s—”
“What, Anne?” Izzy snapped.
I held onto my temper by one fraying thread. She’d gotten off this ship without permission, and the result was several new holes in my body. She’d refused to look at the journal pages or listen to my explanation, then she’d slapped me and locked herself in her room. I prayed for a better hold on my frustration and begged myself to remember that she couldn’t know what she didn’t know.
“The portal is not like a door you can just walk back through. It’s powerful. It has agendas of its own. Even I can’t always get where I want to go,” I attempted to explain.
The portal wasn’t some austere tunnel that led to one place. It was a strong current which ran worldwide throughout every ocean, complete with storms and hazards, rip tides, and monsters. There were eras I had attempted to get to where I was simply shut out by gale-force winds. Other times I’d set my course on a particular year only to be yanked and blown in a different direction.
“It sounds like you’re prepping one doozy of an excuse.” Her sharp tone sliced right through my last thread of patience.
“It’s not an excuse!” I was on my feet, blood pumping hard through my head. I was tensed as if ready for an attack and had to calm down, but everything hurt and I didn’t feel good and I wanted to go home and Izzy was just staring at me waiting for me to fuck up more. My head was going to roll right off my shoulders. My leg and arm screamed at me with every movement. I felt like throwing up. I had to get some rest, or the secondary measures were going to take effect.
I groaned and sat back down, heavy head in my misguided hands. “This was never supposed to be forever. It was just a small summer trip.” I was so very tired. I just wanted to lie down. “Your life is so busy, and I just wanted to get a chance to have one more trip together before you went and moved on without me. But fine. Screw it.” I knew a hopeless cause when it slapped me in the face. “You’re miserable. I’m shot up. Let’s get this shit off the boat and then get you the hell out of here.”
“Great. I couldn’t agree more. Now promise me.” She turned to face me head on. “I mean, this isn’t like ‘I’ll try to get you home before curfew, but you know how traffic is on Fridays.’”
I groaned and leaned back in my seat. For years I had apologized for that over and over. Mom hadn’t grounded her for even half the length of time she’d grounded me. To be fair, we were only fourteen and I didn’t even know there could be that much traffic or that there was such a thing as an emergency brake release.
“What do you want? A pinky swear?” I grumbled as I tried to massage my headache away with my good arm. God, I could feel my pulse in my eyeballs. Only a few more days till Bermuda and then I could rest.
“I want you to swear in such a way that you can’t wriggle out or loophole your way away from this. Give me a definite promise. Give me a concrete promise. Swear on pain of your precious boat sinking to the bottom of the ocean that you, Anne, my sister, will get me home.”
“Never.” I patted my ship lovingly. I would never swear such a thing on such a perfect vessel. Don’t you listen to your mean Auntie Zee, baby. I would never risk you over a foolish promise I had no way of knowing if I could fulfill. “But maybe there’s something I can do.” I wrenched myself to my feet and had to hang onto the rail until my head stopped spinning, then headed towards the steps. Good lord, my leg was killing me. I gritted my teeth with each step.
“I don’t suppose you’d let me help you!” Izzy called after me.
“Just hold on!” If I stopped moving, I’d fall.
I went below deck and grabbed three items: my flask of Fountain, a milkglass mug, and a scalpel-sharp silver knife. I had to stop and regain my balance a few times as I collected these items. I felt like shit. I wanted to go home. I stifled the tears and forged ahead. Just had to get to Bermuda. I could rest in Bermuda.
I swayed at the top of the steps and tried to cover my misstep by holding up the items and smiling. I didn’t see whether she bought the act. My leg was about to collapse under me, and I was focused on not falling on my face. I plunked the items on the small deck table, opened the flask, and poured a small amount of Fountain into the mug. We wouldn’t need much.
This trip was supposed to be the trip where I told her about myself…this was as good a place to start as any. Izzy was intrigued by my little setup and wandered closer to inspect the items.
“I’m going to make you a vow.” I hoped she paid attention to this. With my third item, the knife, I sliced a seven-inch cut from my pinky tip to wrist. Izzy gasped, but before she could move away, my hand flashed out, grabbed her hand, and held it tight as I performed the same incision down the edge of her left hand. Then I wrapped my pinky around hers, our blood mingling, and vowed, “You will get back home where you will live out your days fat, happy, and rich.”
Izzy stared transfixed at the blood running down her arm, finally shocked out of her endless vocabulary. With my free hand I dipped my middle finger in the Fountain and swiped a drop along her incision where it immediately healed, leaving only a thin and barely visible scar.
I performed the same move on my own hand. Then I toasted, “Suck it, Ponce,” and drank half down, then put the mug in her hand.
Izzy lifted the glass. “Upon your precious,” she toasted and threw back the rest. It was only a tiny sip each. She wouldn’t experience more than a little undue stress on her gastrointestinal system. The Fountain was the most holy and important item I carried on this boat. Izzy wasn’t a party to its full protections, but she was bound by it now.
I left her to pilot the boat for a few hours. “Just keep it upright,” I said as I hobbled down the steps. I set my watch alarm for two hours, an absolutely indulgent amount of time, and fell into bed.
****
In my dreams I was sitting on a beach with Maui. “Heeny,” his stupid nickname for me was almost as cheesy as mine for him, “when we win, what kind of world do you think we’ll go back to?”
I was supposed to respond, “One where you shower. You stink, Maui.” That’s what I’d said back when we’d had this conversation, ages ago.
“We don’t win,” my dream self told him. He ignored me.
“As long as your sister is still in the world, we’ll have won.” He lay back and I threw sand on him. It always came back around to Izzy with him. “First chance I get, I’m taking her out dancing. I’ll find her a romantic restaurant. Something dark and candlelit where I can—”
“I will leave your ass on this island and never introduce you to my sister if you finish that sentence,” I threatened him.
He just laughed and enjoyed the rest of his imaginings inside his big, dumb head.
“When we win…” He trailed off, detailing more idyllic fantasies about the world we were hoping to create.
“We don’t win. We never win,” I whispered as he continued talking. I just watched him and soaked up this stolen moment where my best friend was full of life and hope. The dream wandered on as he told stories and we joked on that old familiar beach. Finally he exhausted himself and looked me squarely in the eyes. “Have a little faith, Heeny.”
****
My watch buzzed. I startled awake, my heart pounding and my skin clammy. My whole body was stiff and achy. I pulled my leg over the side of the bed and sat up. Izzy had been up there a while, but I decided to borrow just a little more of her time so I could wash up properly, change my clothes, brush my hair, and get a handle on my resolve. It didn’t matter how shitty I felt, we were getting to Bermuda. I would rest in Bermuda. I disconnected the oven range on my way back to the helm. We were on a ship full of gunpowder. The soup was delicious, but I wanted to live.
Two more days till we arrived in Bermuda.
Then I would do my utmost to take her home.
