The Navigator, page 3
The other pirates closed in around Quill, locking her into a tight circle.
Naris paused at the wheelhouse door. He looked down at Quill, straining to see her among the pirates. "You can swim, Quill. . .or I'll let you take a bullet."
"What?" Quill squeaked. She thought she might be having a heart attack.
The pirates thought Quill's little squeak was hilarious. They renewed their laughter.
Naris disappeared inside the ship.
Quill glanced over at Giles, who approached her ahead of the others.
"Well, you heard the captain. What's it going to be? A drop in the drink, or two in the chest?" Giles poked her twice in the rib cage. "Choose quickly dry foot, or I'll choose for you."
Quill shoved him away. "Don't touch me." She walked over to the railing.
"Just what I would have chosen for ya. Good show."
The pirates watched Quill intently as she threw one leg over the railing and struggled to balance on the other side.
Quill looked down at the water, eight feet below. The sea was relatively calm. It splashed against the ship, gently.
"No. . ." She sobbed for a moment. Her arms felt weak and numb. Little goose bumps poked up all over her body.
Giles pulled out his pistol and pointed it at her from the other side of the railing. He gave her a final, mocking sneer.
"You going to keep us waiting?"
"Fuck you."
Quill took a deep breath and let go, disappearing over the ship side.
All of the pirates but Giles darted over to the side of the ship to see the size of the splash, and to watch her flail in the water.
Giles ignored the spectacle and walked up to the wheelhouse. He nudged open the door and squeezed inside of the narrow room.
Naris was in the captain's chair, manning the helm. He pulled the boat sharply starboard so the crew couldn't watch Quill flounder.
"You look too happy."
"Nothing I like better than throwing dry foots in the drink." Giles grinned. "Why I became a pirate. . ."
"Glad you can still take joy in simple things." Naris kept his eyes locked on the ocean.
"I ever tell you what the Hesperians did to my brothers, at Arno?"
"Many times. . .but still. . . I thought that was quite a waste."
"Same with my brothers. But hell, you had your fun with her." Giles gave Naris a lewd little wink.
Naris was stone. He paid him no attention.
Giles went to walk back out on deck. He paused before leaving.
"Wasn't so smart in the end, was she? If she were, she'd have taken the bullet."
Sea and Fog
- 6 -
Petal inhaled a few grains of sand. They tickled her sinuses. She scrunched her face and let out a cough, while rolling over onto her side. Her skin was filthy and itchy. She brushed the sand off her cheeks and squeezed her eyes shut.
The sun was dull in the early morning, obscured by a thick layer of fog, which hung like a curtain over the ocean.
Petal lay still and listened to the crash of the surf until she felt something brush against her face.
"Junk?" She slowly opened her eyes. "What are you doing?"
Junk was squatting next to Petal, tickling her nose with a long seagull feather. Junk had several feathers sticking out of her hair and a strange ink was smeared across her arms and face.
"Trying to tickle you," Junk teased.
Petal rarely slept in - she always woke up before her sister. The exhaustion from rowing all night had taken its toll. Her arms felt flabby and sore.
"What is this?" Petal pointed at the black substance crisscrossing Junk's arms.
"I painted myself."
Junk had wandered off just after sunrise, looking for an egg to eat, to quell her nagging hunger. She hadn't seen any on the beach, but had come across the body of a gull. A weasel had ripped the bird to shreds. Its bloody feathers were strewn across the sand. Junk adorned herself with some of the cleaner feathers, and had used the others like quill pens. She dipped the feathers into a blob of beach tar, oozing up from the sand, and painted her body with loopy scribbles.
"Why'd you do that?" Petal stood up and stretched her aching muscles. She began to beat the sand off her tattered clothes.
"I wanted to look like a seagull." Junk tweaked the feathers in her hair and then held out her arms. The swirls were meant to be feathers. "Then I wanted to look pretty." She pointed to a smudge of tar she'd used as eye shadow.
"What about this?" Petal licked her finger and rubbed Junk's cheek. Junk had made a crude copy of Petal's tattoo just under her left eyelid. The sticky tar refused to smear under Petal's thumb.
"Then I wanted to look like you," Junk cooed.
"Why would you want to look like me?"
"Because you're my sister."
"You look stupid," Petal sniffed. She scanned the surf. Their boat hadn't moved from the prior night. It was safely beached on the sand.
The fog began to roll across the wave tops and settle on the sand dunes.
"I look like you now - so you look stupid."
"Maybe," Petal paused. "But I don't care how I look."
"Why?"
"I don't have time to. I have to take care of you."
"You don't care because you don't know how to look good."
Petal walked atop one of the dunes and gazed out at the rest of the island.
Most of Piquairn was covered in waist-high grass and tiny yellow flowers. The whole island seemed to flutter with the breeze. On the eastern side, the land folded in on itself the closer it got to the shoreline. There, the island rose higher and higher until it broke off in a steep cliff that loomed over an angry, churning sea.
"Did you start looking for food, or have you just been playing?" Petal motioned for Junk to follow her.
"I didn't see any eggs on the beach. You said they'd be everywhere."
"Albatrosses don't nest on the beach. Foxes would eat their eggs." Petal looked toward the rugged eastern side of the island.
Dozens of birds circled the cliffs from high above. They looked like black smudges in the swirling, gray sky. Petal could hear their territorial squawking.
"That's where they roost, in the cliffs." She pointed at the steep hills. "Up there nothing can get them."
"There? How do we climb up that? It goes straight into the water."
"We don't climb up, we climb down." Petal felt for her pistol and continued forward.
"I don't like heights, they make me dizzy," Junk whined. She strolled through the grass, struggling to keep pace with her sister.
"They're not so scary. You'll get dizzier from hunger."
Over the next half an hour, the two girls meandered across the dunes and meadows that made up Piquairn, winding their way over to the cliff top.
Junk picked flowers along the way. She put them in Petal's hair to try and beautify her.
Petal was bothered by her sister's manic energy. Junk would dart ahead, running toward the cliffs, flapping her arms while squawking like a seabird. Then, invariably, she would collapse down into the grass for twice as long, panting.
By the time the girls reached the cliffs, Junk was exhausted.
Petal began to walk up a steep hill, pulling on the tall grass to keep her balance. She lost her footing when a large tuft tore off in her hand and struggled to recover. She looked back to see if Junk was having the same problem and realized she wasn't following.
"I'm tired," Junk pleaded. "My legs are shaky. If I go up there I'll fall."
"You've been fooling around all morning. How many times have I told you to be serious and stop playing?"
Junk stared down at the grass. It swayed in the breeze. "I like to play."
"We're starving and you'd rather pretend to be a seagull."
"I'm sorry," Junk started to cry. "I like seagulls."
Petal jumped down the hill and hugged Junk, pressing her into her chest.
"Just pay attention, okay? I'm trying to teach you. Teach you where to get food, teach you about stars, teach you how to find your way to these islands. You have to remember these things, for when I'm not here to show you."
Junk peered into Petal's sky-blue eyes. "Why wouldn't you be here?"
"I don't know." Petal let go of Junk and began to ascend the hill. "But if something happened to me, you'd have to take care of yourself. You'll have to know things."
Junk jogged to catch up. "What's gonna happen to you?"
"Nothing's gonna happen. It's just - just in case something does. Understand?"
Junk shook her head.
"Come on." Petal grabbed her hand and pulled her forward. "We need breakfast."
- 7 -
A high swell broke over Quill's head, dunking her face into the ocean. She bobbed back to the surface, sobbing. Naris's ship had long ceased to be even a tiny speck on the wave tops. She spent an hour watching it disappear, screaming at the top of her lungs, before her wails morphed into sobs and she debated whether she should stop treading.
Quill's legs ached. She was tired of struggling.
The ocean was warm. Quill had drifted into the Northern Current, which pulled up the temperate, equatorial waters like a perpetual siphon. While it seemed like a blessing at first, Quill now cursed its temperature. In cold water she would have died quickly, within an hour, from hypothermia. As it was now, she could survive for quite a while, until the ocean sucked just enough heat from her body for it to begin to lock up, and she could no longer keep treading.
Quill tried to stop sobbing, but she was hysterical. Another wave splashed into her mouth and she choked on the salt. She scanned the patch of ocean that surrounded her. With the waves from the current, the water was almost at eye level. She could only see a few hundred feet in any direction, where the wave tops melded in with puffy clouds.
There was nothing in sight but endless ocean. Its utter vastness was soul crushing.
"Naris!" Quill cried into the nothingness. "You snake! You pussy! I fell in love with - with YOU!?"
Thinking about Naris's name was enough to make Quill scream. She could feel her heart thump and her breath quicken as her body was rocked by another panic attack. To fight it, she pulled up her legs and began to float on her back. She then closed her eyes and let the sun warm her.
Quill tried to calm herself. She tried to daydream. All she could see was her lifeless body being nipped at by sharks and blue jacks. Her skin melted off her skeleton and became bloated, sagging on the bone. She saw her corpse come to an eerie rest on the dark seafloor where it was slowly picked apart by giant isopods and hellish sea spiders.
Quill fought as hard as she could to shove the disgusting images from her mind. It was the creeping panic again. She struggled to relax, focusing on the feeling of the water all around her. Its warm embrace. Its peaceful silence. She felt it lap against her body, taking control of her heartbeat. She begged for the water to have its usual effect, but this time it refused to calm her.
Soon Quill's panicked brain slipped back in time, coming to a rest at the Academy. She was sitting in Kita's dorm room, huddled up into a tight ball of nerves, terrified of her looming exam. Her eyes were bleary from lack of sleep and she obsessively chewed on her fingernails.
Kita looked over at Quill from her mirror. She was her usual, bubbly self, smiling while caking her face in makeup.
"You ever going to calm down, Quill?" Kita fumbled with the makeup compact, putting the brush back into its groove. "You're so high strung."
"Always been, but this is too much. There are like a thousand pages I have to review. I'm tired, I'm dizzy, my eyes feel like they're going to melt. I have zero concentration. . .all I can think about is failing."
"Well just try to chill out. It's all in your head. I'm sure you'll be fine. You're a good student - the classic overachiever." Kita giggled. She opened a desk drawer and pulled out a little green baggie. "This should help."
Quill eyed the soma. "I wanted to ask - the last bag didn't help with my nerves. Do you have something stronger?"
"Stronger?"
"If I don't mellow, I'm going to fall apart." Quill fidgeted. "Or have a heart attack. Either way, Una told me you've been selling khat."
"Khat's for addicts. Why don't you just relax by the bay? I know how much that helps balance you. All of your stress is in your head."
"They cordoned off the bay for the weekend - more military drills." Quill picked up a crystal dolphin from Kita's dresser and stared into the wavy glass. Its eyes were made of sapphires.
"Okay. Fine." Kita stood up from her chair. She straightened out the elastic on her underwear and then walked over to her closet. She picked up a pair of jeans from the floor and pulled a square of wax paper out of the back pocket. She turned around and dropped the packet into Quill's palm.
Quill thumbed the little package. "How do I use it? I mean I know how to, but I really hate needles. Is there another way?"
Kita pulled the jeans on. "Put it on a spoon. Cook it. Inhale the smoke. Use a straw. It's harsh, but afterwards . . .well, you'll be mellow."
"You've used?"
Kita rifled through her closet, dissatisfied with her current outfit. "Yup, but not anymore. Too much of a downer. It's a tranquilizer, like the stuff the doctors gave you for your panic attacks. Just remember, administration will give you hell if they find it. . ."
***
As Quill drifted through the ocean she remembered being high on khat for the first time. She remembered how it relaxed her muscles and how her anxiety melted away. She remembered how it used to feel, pushing against the walls of her veins - the same feeling she used to get from lying in water - a steady, almost clinical sedation from the rhythmic push and pull of the waves.
- 8 -
"Whoa. . ."
Junk barely poked her eyes over the cliff ledge. She was laying prone, chest pressed down into the thick grass that clung to the cliff top.
Two hundred feet below, a roaring wave smashed against the rocks. It sent a cloud of white spray up the cliff side, kicking bits of rock into the air. The spray settled out before it made it halfway up, falling back into a sea of foam.
Ke-ke-ke-ke-caw-caw-caw-caaaaw-caaaaw
An albatross squawked a few feet above Junk's head. She felt the wind from the beat of its broad, black-tipped wings.
Petal had just gotten vertical on the cliff. Her head was level with Junk. She began to gingerly feel the rocks below with her naked toes, trying to make sure she could find a steady toehold.
There was a cluster of albatross nests ten feet below Petal, packed next to one another on a small, rocky outcrop. The roosting birds stared up at her with blank, doll-like eyes. They cackled to one another, alarmed at her intrusion.
Petal lowered herself onto a narrow ledge, slightly above the birds. She dug her fingertips into the porous black rocks and clung tightly to the cliff face.
One of the larger albatrosses hopped off its nest and spread its wide wings. It flew up to Petal and began to harass her with squawks and vicious flapping.
Ke-ke-ke-ke-caw-caw-caw-caaaaw-caaaaw
Petal pressed her face into the cliff. Another wave smashed into the rocks below, and the resulting spray cooled the air. She pulled her pistol from her waistband and blindly fired off a shot.
The noise scared the birds away. They abandoned their nests in panic.
Ka-ku-ka-ku-ka-ku.
Petal glanced down at the nests. They were little balls of puffy bird down and tightly woven grass fibers. There were at least a dozen, fist-sized, speckled eggs, cradled inside them. Their shells glistened from the spray and fog. They seemed just out of reach.
"Junk, come down here, next to me. I'll gather the eggs and pass them to you." Petal looked up at Junk.
Junk was green from vertigo.
"It's too steep! I can't go down there, I don't-!" Before Junk could finish her sentence, one of the frightened albatrosses buzzed her. She let out a yelp and disappeared over the top of the cliff.
"Junk?"
Petal looked between the top of the cliff and the violent, churning sea. She continued to slowly ease her way down the cliff face. A section of rock crumbled at her feet, trickling sand and tiny pebbles down onto the eggs below.
Junk popped back over the cliff top. Her thin hair blew wildly in the wind.
