Day 6, noon

My watch buzzed, waking me up. Three hours till my next nap. I stretched and rubbed my eyes. Ouch. I felt my face, all over it there were cuts and bruises. When had that happened? I looked over myself and saw I was dressed in full land clothing. Strange. When it was this warm, I didn’t usually sail in so many layers.

The wind whipped at the sails and I tightened the sheets and checked my heading.

North.

Why was I going north?

The sun was setting already and I settled in to wait for the stars to come out. I should know more about my location once I knew where I was likely headed. The satnav just spun uselessly. Must mean I was in the past. There were no trails in the sky indicating airplanes either. I opened a compartment next to the wheel and pulled out a garment and embroidery floss. My headphones and MP3 player was just underneath the rose silk and I put them on and blasted music while I worked a filigree design into the delicate into the start of a new bodice.

After a while a small notebook sitting near the compass caught my eye and I absently reached for it. Maybe I’d left myself a clue about my current journey. I did that occasionally if my memory was long in returning after several wake ups. Sure enough there were lots of notes. I dropped my sewing and gasped with the returning memories.

You just left Bermuda 1649

Don’t think about Andrews

Izzy is on board

Lady Catherine, Bessie, and a baby are aboard. These are not intruders.

Izzy has seen your scars

You are going to Greenland.

Helene beat the shit out of you.

“Son of a bitch!” I yanked my headphones off and finally heard the voices in the galley below. I shoved the damning technology out of sight and rushed below to confirm what I’d written. There they were. All these people were indeed on my ship and all these people now stared back at me. I leaned into the doorway for support. Their faces looked at me in confusion and I attempted a calming smile before stumbling back up to the wheel. There were passengers on my ship. Holy shit there were passengers on my ship. My chest hurt.

Stay calm.

I remembered it all now. My hands shook as I picked the embroidery back up and tried to focus on the needlework. Don’t break the thin threads. Keep the tension just so. Focus on the task. It’ll all work out.

“Anne?” Izzy came up the stairs a few moments later with a plate of food. “Is everything okay?”

I was weakening inside, bending, rotting. I could feel it. I needed her to leave so I could rake the wreckage of my soul into a semblance of a sister. No, I was not okay.

“Yup, all good.” My voice was a little north of normal but maybe she wouldn’t notice. My stomach snarled and I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten. That wasn’t to be trusted however as my memory was currently patchy at best.

Izzy put the plate down and then sat herself down. I was hungry but couldn’t help but feel like Persephone being offered that pomegranate seed: eat and trade your soul for a few calories.

She put the coffee carafe down and watched the waves. We sat in blessed silence as I bullied my mind and soul into relaxing. It felt like trying to massage a cinder block. I needed to chill out or she’d start to worry.

“I’ve been thinking about Maui.” Izzy broke the silence.

I accidentally stuck myself with the needle and cursed.

“You said I time traveled before, to see him," she continued. "You both have that brand. And he told me some things about it.”

I wiped the small blood spot on my leg wraps so I wouldn’t bleed on the dress. I was missing stitches and being careless. So careless Why had I ever brought up Maui? I cursed again. The sun was right in my eyes and I was tired and making mistakes. My hand automatically went to rub the tough old scar on my neck. I’d eaten that pomegranate; time to pay her price.

“Oh?” The brand was one of my oldest marks. I didn’t hate it as much as I hated the scars on my legs but it was a close second. Focus on the stitching. Izzy did not need details, she just needed suitable answers. “Yeah. You got branded your first day. So they could keep track of you.” The guards swept us off the beach, bound us, starved us, then burned their mark into our necks. And that was the easy part. “Not fun.” I grimaced and looked for a new topic. Izzy had brought a plate of food up. She loved food. She would talk for hours about food. “How’s Catherine coming with the eggs? I can smell the burnt from here.” My kitchen likely stank to high heaven between the burnt eggs and the fish. Tasted alright though.

“She’s great. So tell me about when I time traveled before to see Fetu.” Izzy blurted out. I choked on my eggs at her sudden change in direction. Fun fact: hot coffee does not go down well after burnt scrambled eggs with what appeared to be fish roe mixed in. Still, wasn’t the worst meal I’d ever eaten.

Oh dear god, I’d forgotten I’d told her that little nugget. It was suddenly over-bright and hot here on deck. My shirt clung to my back as I sweat through it. Stupid idiot, why not just tell her you slept with Leif Erikson, if you are just going to go spilling secrets left and right? Dumbass. I cleared my throat and tried to remember what words were.

I’d brought Izzy along on that first trip, not for her, but for Maui. He’d been listening to my Izzy stories since the temple and constantly begged to meet her in person. Maui was in desperate need of love and affection during his recovery in Cabo. When Izzy mentioned wanting a beach vacation…I don’t know, it just seemed to fit.

“You wanted to keep going for spring break. So I took you. It wasn’t a long way —”

“What about the first time, Anne? I didn’t ask to go the first time-- and when was it, anyway?”

My god it was hot out here. All these layers. My scars pulled at me underneath their wraps. My boat was the one place I was supposed to be able to relax and unwind all these layers. Not anymore.

“The 1960s,” I answered her and itched at my pants. Where was that blonde girl, or that baby? If they could come up here and distract my sister with their pitiful refugee status and sticky fingers that would be great.

No one arrived. Passengers were useless.

“You said you wanted a beach vacation, fire pits and all.” I finished the eggs and sat back. Maui was still a sore spot even after all this time. I shrugged. “I missed my friend and wanted to go too.”

He and I hadn’t left each other on good terms.

“Just fucking stay here and recover. Eat, rest, find a girl.”

“And what about you? You could do with a rest too.”

“Don’t pretend you care about me now.” I wish I could say I regretted those words but I didn’t. “Does this look like a place designed for me to rest? No. This is for you.”

“Where do you rest, Heeny? Are they looking out for you too?” He gestured to Zheng and Mo.

“I don’t need to rest. I just need to leave.”

I stayed away from him after that and didn’t return until Izzy put the idea in my mind to find a beach for Spring Break. I loved him. I hated him. This long after his death I still couldn’t make up my mind.

“How did you get branded? Fetu said -- I didn’t understand most of it.” Izzy switched topics again.

“The temple –” My mind felt stretched like a rubber band, taut and wrapped around several points at once. I couldn’t keep up with her line of questioning. Branding, Maui/Fetu, burnt eggs…why were we going north? I was exhausted. I rubbed my eyes and hissed at the pain. DAMMIT! “The portal is dangerous. There was a storm and I shipwrecked. I was taken captive – Maui was there. They branded us our first day. All us sacrifices were marked the same way.”

Sacrifices, slaves, captives, damned…the terms were interchangeable. One by one each sacrifice was led into the temple and one by one we’d bury their remains when they were carried back out. When it was my turn…the others’ dreaded their marches, I was relieved. I thought it was all about to be over. Finally.

The temple is where the fountain originates. It begins there as a river and then courses out over the world. It is power. It is important. It demands power in return. Even now that power coursed through me, keeping time with my own heart. Yet, though I had been ready for my grave, I walked out of that temple under my own power.

The idea of cool dirt over my head now sounded peaceful. I could use some peace. The equatorial sun was blazing.

“And then what? I know something big happened there.” Her voice belonged to another world.

The marble floor was cool beneath my blistered feet as I finally made my march inside. The room I was led to was dank and perfumed. Then the priests came in – my head felt ready to split open.

“The temple’s where it all started. It’s the origin of the portal, the wellspring of the Fountain. It was –” awful, terrible, fantastic, life altering, horrific, terrifying, momentous – “big.” The word would do for now,.“Like you said.”

Lots of work. Lots of groveling. Very hot. Zheng stealing my food, that bitch, because she had no self control. Maui and I building ships under the hard eyes of the acolytes, him yammering endlessly on, telling me stories about constellations and sex. Watching parades of captives marched into the temple and subsequently burying each and every one of them afterwards. I could still hear his screams when the priests began on him. I could still hear all of them screaming. Too bad this coffee wasn’t gin...or a giant baseball bat I could hit myself over the head with.

I was tired. I needed to take another nap. She was asking so many questions and I was going to lose her if I kept answering. I knew who I was but who would she start thinking I was after all this? My head hurt.

“I think I understand some of it. The Fountain is the source of your power and your youth and healing. So did Maui run out? Is that why he died in battle?” She whiplashed back to my lost friend.

“What?” What the hell was she talking about? Run out? Of Fountain? “No. Mo replenishes us when we run out.” I rubbed my eyes and groaned again as the forgotten bruises throbbed. My head was killing me. “Maui just died, Izzy. You know this.”

“I don’t know anything! I don’t understand. If the Fountain kept you from dying after the Puritans, why didn’t it save him from blood loss or bullets or whatever?”

Fuck.

How do I explain this one? I lived in fear of the day I’d lose Izzy. And here Izzy had lost me again and again and again and…shit.

“Izzy...” She wanted to know things. Here might be a good place to start. “I did die. They killed me.” I watched her to make sure she heard. Whether she understood, I didn’t know. “The Fountain works in a few ways. There is the first aid in the flask. And the secondary measures bring you back when you are killed.” I pulled my pistol out of its holster and handed it to her. “But you could take that gun, put a bullet through my head and kill me. I’d die for a moment and then I’d come back. And you could do it over and over and over again. And I’d still be here the next morning.”

Izzy held the gun. For a moment I wished she’d fire it and kill me. I deserved it. I know I deserved it. Maybe she was powerful enough to make it stick.

“Oh. So you’re immortal, then.”

“No.” I wanted that clear.

“What?” She looked like she’d been tricked.

“I’m not immortal.”

“Fine.” She was irritated. “Immortal-adjacent, then.”

“Maui died.” It was fact. It was evidence. It was a terrible reminder, but an important one. We were not gods or flawless. We would answer for our crimes with our lives if we were careless.

Something was off with her. Izzy was a close acquaintance with Death. Three of her parents had fallen behind that veil followed shortly thereafter by the first giant and booming love of her life. My sister wasn’t a person who became entangled in the bargaining stage of grief.

“Why didn’t he come back?” Her voice was barely audible over the wind and waves.

She’d loved him. I think she’d wanted a real future with him. But like me, Maui didn’t have a future. He’d broken the relationship off when he went back to fight. My sister still grieved him.

“Best I can figure…he didn’t want to.” My best friend, my beloved brother-in-arms, had committed suicide. I hated him. No, I loved him. He was a selfish ass. I missed him. I would have helped. I would have done anything.

Izzy made an excuse to leave and I wiped away the angry tears. I hated him. I was exhausted and stretched to the breaking point. At least I wasn’t thinking about Graham…dammit.

I started picking out the embroidered flower I’d messed up on the bodice. I put my headphones back over my ears and cranked up the volume louder than the demons in my head. I didn’t want to hear anything but loud blasting grunge bands.

Maui was the only one of us to swim that river to the other side.

The only one so far.

I looked out at the ocean and felt the leagues of endless nothing as oppressive and all consuming. To the south lay an island, with people I loved and a life where I had belonged. I was now far adrift from them all. Far from him, from them…just gone. What I wouldn’t give to be well and truly gone.

I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked around. It was Bessie. She looked curiously at the headphones. I yanked them off with a “fucking hell” and tossed them in the box next to the wheel and slammed the lid. Bessie wanted to know if I might teach her some sailing. I told her later. Probably not today.

Three hours later I was due for another nap. I set my watch and wrote a few more notes to myself.

Get your shit together

Izzy wants all kinds of answers

Learn the baby’s name

Bessie is asleep in the hammock

No technology