Day 8

She left. Soon after the other women followed and I was alone at the helm. It was a cloudy night and I didn’t get much of a bearing via the stars. It wouldn’t matter too much until we were up around Canada anyway. Cirrus clouds skimmed past the moon. Air pressure was shifting. I could smell rain on the wind. We’d hit weather tomorrow or the next day. There was nothing to see in all this darkness but there would be a bank of clouds come morning.

At least two solid weeks of open ocean travel left before we even got to Canada. I hummed an old song to myself. This afternoon I’d woken from such a deep sleep on my ship while it was in motion. The experience had been disorienting and nauseating. I’d felt like crap before but it was my usual manageable crap. Physical deprivation was familiar. I could handle it. I could focus on it. Now I’d gotten sleep and there was nothing to focus on except loss.

Izzy had written me that note saying I was safe. It was a lie. She couldn’t know I was safe. She couldn’t tell me my future, no one had that power. It was lies. I could never be safe. Even asleep, I was hunted by nightmares. I didn’t want to sleep ever again. Enough of my waking thoughts were occupied by Graham. I didn’t need my dreams to scream me his image through smoke. I didn’t need to see the faces of my family scorn me and accuse me.

The wind whipped up into the sails and I smelled the storm coming. Good. I wanted it.

When the sun rose, Bessie came up and asked if she could relieve me. I told her I was fine. The young girl placed a tray down and went to read in her hammock. I didn’t want food. I wanted the storm. My life on that island was over. Diane Andrews knew how to eat. She was mortal. She was married. She had a family and a life. Who was this empty stranger walking around in my body? She was no one. And No One needed no food, no sleep, no safety. I left the food on the tray. No One wasn’t hungry. She didn’t deserve it even if she was hungry. The pains in my stomach at least made me feel something. Something was always better than nothing, right?

Izzy was up not long after Bessie. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s a calm morning.” I was really starting to despise having passengers on board. I was right not to take them on. All this talk. All the questions. I had to make it stop. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not great.” She fussed with her rings and I followed along the well worn path of getting her to talk about herself so she wouldn’t see me.

“He’ll be okay. He’s got probably six weeks before he even arrives in England. Hurricane season is still a ways away.” I looked at the sky again. No, it wasn’t. Hurricane season was here. “When he gets to England – when he safely gets to England – then he’ll probably spend some time with his family before reporting for the front.” Officers didn’t really count in my book as soldiers. If you could go home for lunch you weren’t at war. “You will see him again.”

“You can’t know that.” She kept twisting that ring. Why the hell did I let her get married? I should have thrown her over my shoulder, shot her blue eyed lover (and anyone else who got in the way) and taken her home. My heart clutched. I suddenly wanted to be gone from here. She needed to be put back home where she would be safe and I could be gone. Gone sounded so good. Far away where it could be just me and the stars again. The stars wouldn’t care.

“I could find out. Around Greenland there’s a portal entrance. Just need to sail through and get the answers. You could come with me. Just a short jump through the portal.” Down below that baby cried and the sound ground into my teeth. Bessie got out of her hammock and each of her footsteps sounded like thunder. I wanted silence. Dear God, I prayed, let her take me up on that offer. I could use a break from all these people even if it did mean going to England.

“Really?”

“He wouldn’t dare come to harm with you waiting for him. I’ve seen him fight. He’s good.”

“When did you see Ian fight?”

“Kings Bay. He put on an impressive show. I didn’t go up against him but he was instrumental for the navy.” The huge naval ships started bombing us from the water. Then a line of soldiers appeared out of the trees. Most of my comrades were sailors who only knew how to navigate squalls on the sea, not march in formation on a battlefield. We were slaughtered. Marco and that thieving rat bastard had survived. So had Izzy’s lieutenant. I kept rambling to her about how Ian would probably do fine in a fight if he ever truly saw any action. After all, someone might steal the silver spoon out of his mouth and he’d have no choice but to send in the cavalry. I picked up my embroidery again and began to work fussy little roses into the filigree pattern.

“Are you going to eat?” Izzy spoke out of nowhere.

I jumped, startled at her presence; I thought she’d gone below.

“I’m not hungry. I’ll save it for later.” My fingers fumbled a stitch and I felt the corners of my eyes heat and prick. I couldn’t even do this flower correctly. Stupid, stupid bitch. I tried again and knotted the thread. Izzy kept talking to me and it all turned to noise and messed up sewing. I just wanted – I don’t even know what I wanted.

That’s not true.

I knew what I wanted. I wanted my life in Bermuda back.

Izzy somehow transitioned to talking about women leaving their husbands and how lucky they were. Especially if they were in an abusive situation.

“I don’t know if you remember this, but when we were in high school, I did a project about domestic abuse.” She’d brought up this same project after seeing what Helene had done to my face.

I gently touched the bruises. It shouldn’t have ended like this. Everything got messed up and it was all my fault.

“Do you know that for most women, it takes multiple attempts to leave?” Izzy kept yammering on.

I’d tried to leave him. I’d tried to leave him over and over again. We loved each other.

She was still talking.

He’d just been scared, upset. He was trying to do right by his son and the woman who would be his wife. Leave my family alone, she’d ordered. I’d abide by her edict now.

“Do you know how few women get to leave?” Izzy looked toward the steps where my two passengers were talking and cooking.

“You’re right. They’re lucky.” They still had a chance.

Izzy still wouldn’t stop talking.

Graham and I hadn’t been like that. We’d loved each other. I needed him. I’d ruined it all so badly. Just like this fucking embroidery.

Izzy was STILL talking.

I chucked the damned embroidery back in the box and stood. “I need to use the head. Do you mind taking over for a few minutes?” I stilled my shaking hands and looked up at the sun till I could compose myself.

“Sure! Take your time. Feel free to take a shower or grab a bite to eat.”

“I’ll see what’s down there.” I had to fucking get out of here.

“Anne. I’m expecting you to let me know when you’re tired and ready to rest. Okay?”

“That or you’ll drug me again, right?” Maybe the drugs wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe I could just drown myself in not feeling anything at all. Sleep. Dream. At least in my nightmares Graham was still there.

“I’d rather not. We need you. And we need you functional.”

“I’m right here. I’ll let you know if something’s wrong.” Words. So many words. Signifying nothing. I rushed down to my cabin without bothering to acknowledge any of my passengers. I slammed the door shut and put my forehead against the cool bulkhead. I needed to keep it together but there was nothing left. There was nothing left of myself worth keeping. My eyes grew hot and overflowed but I had to keep silent. I had to keep it together.

[Heeny,] Maui’s voice came to me as I unraveled. [Heeny, it’s okay. It’s okay.]

“No, it isn’t. It isn’t! Goddammit!” I slammed my fist against the hull. The voices in the galley quieted and I reminded myself that I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t break. I couldn’t be anything less than the Bitch Captain of the Seven Seas.

[Talk to her, she wants to help.]

“She wants the sister I used to be to her. She wants to get back to her husband. She wants me to be fine. And I am fine. I have to be fine. I will be fine.” I dropped to the floor and put my head between my knees, wiping at my eyes till they hurt.

[You can be whatever you want. Rest. Just rest. Nothing has to be now.]

“I can’t do this.”

[You can. Just rest.]

“No.” He’d refused to rest. I got to my feet and held myself steady till the dizziness passed. I couldn’t sleep or I’d dream. I couldn’t stay in this room talking with a ghost. I couldn’t leave and be a cruise director. I couldn’t do anything. My reflection in the mirror looked terrible. I dug around in a drawer and found some sunglasses to hide the red around my eyes. Izzy had showed them the fucking rice cooker, I could wear a damn pair of sunglasses.

I needed to get my shit together. I needed to get to Greenland. I needed to get my passengers the hell off my ship and then…

And then what?

Nothing. I wanted nothing. I wanted a giant chasm of nothing and no one and no feelings and no pressure.

I left my cabin once I was sure I could utter syllables without breaking down and waved absently to whoever was in the galley. I was having lapses in memory and now conversations with dead-and-gone friends. But I couldn’t sleep. If I slept I’d dream. And no more of that. No more.

Food kept appearing next to my chair but I only had eyes for the weather. It was starting to show in the waves and the animal life. I needed to start battening down. I kept all my thoughts surface and light, preferring to let the heavier, darker memories and grief sink down and drown in the depths below. Up on the surface I wasn’t tired or hungry or thoughtful. Up on the surface I trimmed the jib, hummed a tune, and put needle and thread through fabric. Stay afloat, I counseled myself, there are no monsters up here on the surface.

The sun traveled through the sky as my passengers occupied themselves however they wanted. Bessie attempted to ask again for sailing lessons but I waved her off. I’d teach her another time. Or never. What felt like seconds later Izzy was back up harping about eating. I was slightly disappointed she wasn’t carrying a dosed mug of wine for me. She kept harping about food, so much food. But I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t anything. Then she turned her attention to sleep. I wasn’t going to do that either. No sleep. No dreams. I’d rested enough.

“I slept all day yesterday,” I brushed her off.

“No, Anne, I’m serious.” She stayed true on this same course.

Didn’t she get it? If I let go of this wheel, I’d fall. I’d fall and I didn’t know how I’d get back up again.

“Now,” she ordered. “Go and lie down for a bit. We really need you to have your shit together.”

I was going to fall.

“My shit is fine. We haven’t gone down yet, have we? Relax. I do this all the time.” It had been just me and this ship and the stars to guide me since forever. I didn’t need a break then and I couldn’t take one now. I was going to fall.

“Yeah, and sometimes when you do it, you forget yourself and attack your beloved sister with a rolling pin. Do you remember that?” she shouted this tidbit out and I came up short. I did not remember it. Rolling pin? When had I attacked her with a rolling pin? Izzy was looking at me in accusation and I begged my memory to please comply, please don’t betray me, not now.

Like a slow leak from a steam valve, an image escaped my tight grasp. A few months ago, before we’d left Bermuda but after Tavern Rock, I’d broken down in my galley. The specifics of the moment were lost but I recalled Izzy cowering in the corner of the galley as I stood over her shouting and holding something that I'd thought was a cane but had only been her rolling pin.

“That was different,” I mumbled, embarrassed to be caught out about that lapse.

“Look, I really don’t want to hear your excuses,” she accused. I was annoying her.

“They are not excuses.” If I let go, I would fall. All I had was my grip. I couldn’t let go. Hold as tight as you can or be swept away.

“I told Bessie and Catherine they’d be safe. That girl trusted me enough to bring her baby on this ship.” Izzy clearly wanted to pace or cook. She wanted to be anywhere but up here arguing with me about nap time.

“I’m not going to hurt that baby.” Why would she think I wanted to harm a child? On top of all the awful things she now knew and thought about me she was willing to add child endangerment? How terrible had I become in her eyes? I gripped the wheel tighter. I wasn’t a terrible person. I wasn’t. I wouldn’t hurt a child.

"Auntie? Want to play a game?" Five year old Magnus held up a rook from his mother’s prized chessboard. He grinned. Helene would be upset about the missing piece. It was one of the only gifts I’d ever brought her that she displayed openly.

"I’ll get you your own board one day. Go put that back. Let’s go play Go Fish." I tousled his hair and kissed his soft cheek.

"Okay!" He ran off to get the cards.

I’d left him. He would grow up thinking I’d left him.

“I’d rather not risk it," I heard Izzy continue. "You can’t kill yourself but you can kill the rest of us.”

Even though I’d told her I wasn’t immortal, she didn’t believe me. She thought that if I changed course and gleefully sailed my ship to the ocean floor, that the only casualties would be her and the other children on board. She was wrong. I could die. Maui had died.

“I’m not –” I almost said ‘I’m not Maui’ but she didn’t know how her first love died and I wasn’t about to burden her that way. “I won’t –”

Izzy draped herself around me and I was shocked into silence. The last person to hug me was Graham. [Not too long away this time, Nanette. Yes?] I’d left him. Izzy’s embrace shattered one of the final struts holding me up. I had let him go and I’d never get him back.

“Go rest. You’ll feel better once you do. We all will,” she pleaded in my ear.

“I’m not tired.” If I let go, I’d fall.

“I’m not asking.” She kissed my cheek and removed my hands from the wheel. The deck felt unsteady under my feet.

“How long am I in time out for?” The sky and sea rocked, unbalancing me.

“I don’t know. Just take a nap. Say, three hours?”

I was going to fall over. “Fine. Three hours.”

I wasn’t going to sleep. I didn’t deserve sleep. For the second time in one day I walked in my cabin and shut the door. The tiny space sat like last year’s fashions against my eyes. The room belonged to me but I didn’t want to be here anymore. Maui’s and my helmets sat on a shallow ledge by the port hole. My drawers were filled with clothing for someone to wear if she had any ambition to walk this world again. There were notes pinned to the wall, blades stowed carefully in cases, an embroidered coverlet on my bed, all trappings of a life that I didn’t know how to live right now. And, of course, Maui’s specter was there to greet me. I set my alarm for three hours and sat.

[Rest, Heeny. Take a break.] He sat next to me.

“I don’t get a break.” I rubbed my eyes and leaned back against the bulkhead. “You were the first one to remind me of that.” Three hours of me trapped in this room with my own manias. Izzy was punishing me. I deserved it.

[Close your eyes. Sleep. This is just a bad moment.]

“I don’t want any more moments.” I just wanted it all to stop.

****

The portal was furious with me. The current churned against my hull trying to keep me in place and the winds bashed my sails from every direction. My rented ketch struggled to keep up as I tacked about trying to stay on course. A sudden gust from the east caught me unawares and the boom caught me in the diaphragm and knocked me off the ship. I couldn’t breathe but I had to get back to the ship. I inhaled as much salt water as I did oxygen but made it to the safety line.

The waters changed. I don’t know how I knew it but I knew it. This water was old, primordial. I shivered and gasped and struggled to make it back to the ketch. A dark shadow boiled out of the deep.

“No. Please,” I begged. But the portal was furious. I had disregarded its warnings too often.

The beast leapt from the water, a seventy foot mass of teeth and aggression and landed on my ship, shredding it to splinters, using its sharp teeth to snap whatever remained. A life jacket landed near me and I gripped it for dear life. The beast churned the waters up looking for more palatable prey. It sniffed me out and gnashed its teeth. The beast snapped down and it was a minute before I understood my left arm was gone at the shoulder. The waters changed again and the beast with its enormous maw was drawn away and I was left in a pile of floating ketch rubble and no idea how to escape the portal.

“I won’t go back again. I won’t!” I shouted and the waters changed again and the beast with its enormous maw was drawn away and I was left in a pile of floating ketch rubble and one floating seat cushion and no idea how to escape the portal.

The water around me turned from blue to a deep red as I bled profusely from my severed artery. My arm was gone. Where did it go? The secondary measures came on fast.

The lightning struck.

The sea calmed and the sky stopped pounding me and I lay back in the water and cried. It was all too much. My arm was back with a severe circle of bloody connective scar tissue at my shoulder. It reminded me of Zheng’s neck. I zipped the neoprene life jacket on and let it hold me up. The last mission had been awful and Maui expected results this time. I had killed everyone on my hit list but it still wasn’t enough. Their ships had still launched with their men on board and their missions secure. The West was pouring into the Pacific like an unstoppable tide and no amount of blood, sweat, or tears was stopping it. There were just too many people and not enough viable research to counter them. We were losing.

Maui was working with the Islanders, trying to prepare them and shore up their readiness, my job was to slow and kill the Europeans coming to conquer. I was failing. Maui knew I was failing and had stopped expecting me to return with any success stories. “Do it right this time, Heeny,” were his parting instructions to me before this mission. We had not said goodbye.

Now I was floating in a heap of wreckage from my stolen/rented ship and wondering how in the hell I was going to get out of the portal and back to him. When my heart and breathing calmed enough I lay there floating, more relaxed than I’d been in ages. The portal seemed to want to accommodate me and calmed the waters and sky. I’d been a one woman Sherman tank rolling across the 18th, 19th, and early 20th century fighting to keep the islands from exploitation. This past trip I’d torched a series of ships and drowned men at sea. I’d run and hid and killed and destroyed and died and still we were losing. Floating here after this monster attack was my first vacation. I was tired.

Over a week later I was still floating. I’d died of dehydration three times and hunger once. The portal was doing everything it could to keep me comfortable but it wasn’t letting me leave. I’d die again in a few hours; I recognized the progression intimately now. My tongue was sandpaper and I couldn’t grip anything. All I could do was float in my life jacket and pray that the portal wouldn’t send another dinosaur from the primordial ooze to tear me limb from limb.

The lightning struck.

I was immediately thirsty. I started the countdown in my head till dehydration took me again. My belly gripped. I was starving. I wondered if I could paddle out of the portal. I tried a few strokes but my muscles gave out quickly. My eyes were already having trouble focusing. The horizon blurred and blackened in and out of focus. When I hallucinated the silhouette of the Try Your Luck I sped up my countdown till I died again. I passed out as the familiar hull came close, a figure in a glinting silver helmet worked the wheel.

The lightning struck and I woke on the deck of my ship. A small glass of water sat within reach and I was not alone. A figure in my clothes and my gleaming silver helmet sat in her captain’s chair watching me. She signed for me to drink. I dove on the water. When I finished it she went below decks and returned with another cup and a plate of bread. Neither of us spoke.

She dropped me off in the 70s at a familiar marina and I choose a nice easy to manage sloop. I wore my life jacket from the minute I left the docks. The portal gave me no trouble this time as I sailed back to Maui but I knew I was shut out of the 18th century now.

Maui greeted me with a scowl and orders to destroy the modern ship before any islanders could see it. We set sail that very night despite the rainstorm. He wanted to go to the Marianas Islands and send me off to work against the Spanish.

“Go back. You’ll just have to try again,” he growled.

“I’ve tried eight times, Maui. The portal is rejecting me. It’s not working.”

“Then you aren’t trying hard enough! It doesn’t mean as much to you. If it did, you would find a way,” he accused, his face desperate and furious.

“I am trying!” The storm broke over us and the rain began lashing furiously against us and the decking. “It’s just not working! We need to do something else.”

“We could go back farther. Find the captains younger –”

“I can’t do that.” Was he really talking about killing children?

“You’ll let all the children on these islands die because you can’t stomach a little bloodshed!”

“They just keep finding new captains! New explorers. Hell! Half these islands already had exposure to ships and crews even before it was recorded in the books. I’m exhausted, Maui! We have to take a break.”

“They don’t get a break, you don’t get a break!”

“No, Maui. I’m not going back again!”

“Fine. Who needs you!” He lashed out and pushed me hard backwards. The deck was slippery and I couldn’t find solid footing in the storm. A wave came at just the wrong moment and over I went.

****

[They need you. I needed you.] Maui’s spectre hadn't left my side.

“No one needs me. I can’t do this anymore.” Graham’s hat rested just below the note pinned to my wall, the one that said to Come Home.

[So don’t do this.]

“What else is there?”

[Is life so singular? You know better than anyone that’s not true.]

My watch finally buzzed. My three hour sentence was over.

“Enough.”

[Exactly. Enough. You are enough. You’re just a little bent. Not broken.]

“So were you.” I couldn’t sit here talking to a ghost. He wasn’t really here anyway. I was talking to my own desperation. I left my cabin and went up to pilot my ship.

Izzy was at the wheel. I felt stiff, my muscles thick with sludge and muck. The sun was nearly set and I looked forward to a quiet night in my chair alone. The air smelled of storm and I took a last look around at the water conditions before the light failed in order to get a sense of how long I had before it reached us. Up in the sky the upper layers of clouds ran opposite to the lower, that was a bad sign. We’d make it through the night but barely.

“Three hours,” I said by way of greeting, “You can go be with the others now. I’ll take it from here.”

Izzy looked me over a moment before she moved away from the wheel. I checked the course and sat down. Greenland was still so far away. I rubbed my eyes and hissed at the unexpected pain. I’d forgotten about the bruises for a moment.

“That wasn’t so bad, right? How are you feeling? Rested?” Izzy hadn’t gone below yet. I startled at her speech. I thought I was alone.

“Much better. Yes,” I lied.

“Yay! Thank you. Teamwork, Anne.” She hugged me and I let her but I wanted her to go away. I wanted to be alone so I didn’t have to think or perform. She didn’t leave. “You really can count on me as a partner, okay? Someone will be up with food and coffee for you in a bit.”

"Sounds good. Thanks.” This time she did leave. The sun set as my passengers occupied themselves however they wanted. Bessie attempted to ask again for sailing lessons but I waved her off. I’d teach her later. Everyone went to bed except me. I wasn’t tired. I wasn’t going to dream anymore. I’d sleep later. Lightning flashed in the distance followed by the long rumble of far off thunder. I smiled. Perfect. Bring it on.

[Take it easy, Heeny,] Maui’s spectre continued to haunt me.

“Go back to being dead.” He wasn’t here. He’d left me a long time ago.