A Song for the Stars, page 14
I’ve struck a deal with the chief. I’ve offered him the use of our guns, though it took me hours to convince the crew it’s for our best interest, especially the sailor who saw me taken captive. Now I must return to the island. The chief is going to tell his daughter she must spend these next few weeks teaching me to navigate.
I feel like that boy-pig, causing problems no matter what I do. My men have wrought turmoil in the lives of the Hawaiians the moment we returned, and I don’t know how to begin trying to fix what’s been broken. So though we might not have the ability to erase all that has happened, perhaps we can give them something beneficial in the aftermath. But none of it will be worth it if I disappoint her. Not after everything she’s done for me.
My stomach twists not knowing how she will react.
I walk along the beach where the water meets the sand. My feet sink into the dampness, marking my path. It gives way easily, evidence of where I’ve been. Of where I am. I look behind me to measure how far I can see my footsteps. I frown at how few remain, how easily the waves have washed them away. I frown again when I see John following my path, heading toward me. I avoided him yesterday after my father’s announcement in the council hut, but I know I can’t put off our training any longer now that he’s found me.
I stop walking and stay still, waiting for him to catch up and letting my feet sink deeper and deeper into the sand with each wave. I shade my eyes at the rising sun, peeking its rays behind the wooden planks of the Resolution. It’s still a strange sight to see Cook’s massive ships in our bay, something I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to.
“You’re angry.” John stands beside me and looks out at the horizon as well.
It’s not a question, but I answer him anyway. “Yes.”
“If there were another sailor who could speak your language, I would appoint him instead. I apologize the circumstances require you to be with me.”
I huff. “I’m not angry about having to be with you.” I turn and speak to him directly. “And I’m not angry about having to teach you how to navigate, either.”
If anything, teaching him more of our traditions and practices will help him understand us better. Knowing our language is one thing, but understanding a culture, its people, goes a lot further. Perhaps it will help him fathom the harm he’s doing by throwing his weapons into our hands. It can’t end well.
Relief washes over his face, and he asks, “Then what is it?”
I raise an eyebrow. “Isn’t it obvious? Those guns of yours. I want nothing to do with them. I don’t want my people to have any part of them, either.”
He nods, understanding. “I can’t promise you that all of your men will survive the fight. I can’t promise you something won’t go wrong, that the guns won’t cause harm to people you care about. I can’t even guarantee you a victory against your enemy.” He reaches a hand to my shoulder and squeezes it. “I know you don’t want this.”
I glance at his hand on my skin. Is he referring to the guns or . . . or having to be with him?
He drops his hand and stands taller. “But we ruined your chance at a victory when we fought against you and diminished your ranks.” He pauses, searching my eyes. “Let us help you get it back.”
I glance behind him at the sand. The two paths of footsteps we created are no longer there, washed away by the water. If only the impression the sailors made on my people were so easily erased. Here one moment, gone the next, leaving no evidence they even existed. No lasting mark. Easily forgotten.
“Maile?”
I look back at John. He wants me to tell him it’s all right. He wants me to forgive him. There are so many things I need to forgive, but I’m not ready yet. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be.
I sigh, eager to change the subject. “Take off your clothes,” I say.
John trips over his feet though he hadn’t been moving, stumbling in the sand.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
He clears his throat and dusts off his uniform though there’s nothing to clean. “I . . . I’m sorry. Did you say what I thought you said?”
There he goes with his concerns about modesty again. “You can keep your . . . under layers on if you like.” I reach for the fasteners on his jacket to help him remove it. I feel like I’ve become an expert at it. “But I don’t want you to ruin another set of clothing now that you’re looking . . . nice again.”
John blushes but helps me remove his coat before pulling his white shirt over his head. “Why do I need to undress to learn about navigation?”
“Because you’re getting in the water.” I help him place his clothing a safe distance from the tide then motion for him to follow me down the beach. “The first step in learning how to find your way across the sea is to get to know the sea herself. Feel her. Let her feel you. Become one together.”
John blushes again and stays silent until we’ve reached a length of rock surrounding a pool of water close to the beach. The rocks essentially block the incoming waves, creating a quiet, shallow pool just deep enough to wade in safely. It’s where we bring the little ones before they’ve learned to swim. It’s the perfect way to get to know the water without harm.
I motion to the pool. “Your job today is to stay in the water. Sit, lie, wade, whatever you like. But I want you to get all the way in. Immerse yourself.”
“You want me to sit in a pool of water all day?” His words hold confusion rather than frustration. “What will that teach me?”
“Did you not hear me a moment ago?” I roll my eyes as though I’m talking to a child. “You need to get to know the ocean. Feel her.”
“Yes, I remember all that, but . . .” He pauses. “I grew up near a shipyard. I’ve spent years at sea. I’ve seen more of the ocean than most people ever have. This is pointless.”
“Years on a ship,” I say. “Twelve meters up in a floating mountain doesn’t count. How often did you actually get in the water?”
He presses his lips together. “I don’t see what that has to do with navigating a ship.”
“And that’s precisely why you need to do this,” I say. “So you can see what it has to do with navigating a ship.” I pause. “You aren’t going to be stubborn about this, are you? My father trusted me to teach you. I need you to trust me, too.”
“I trust you,” he mumbles before stepping into the water.
“All the way in,” I say, tilting my head as he tiptoes slowly.
John walks to the center of the pool, the deepest part, and the water reaches just below his waist. “I’m all the way in.”
I sigh and walk in after him. These next few weeks will test my patience if he keeps being reluctant, forcing me to explain every little detail.
“No,” I say, pushing down on his shoulders. “All the way in.”
He sinks into the water until nothing but his head is above the surface.
I lower myself into the water as well, but fully immerse myself, wetting my hair and face before breaking the surface again to breathe. I float on my back and close my eyes. Every part of me is touching the water. Not the sand. Not the rocks. Not the man beside me. Just the water.
“All the way in,” I whisper again.
I hear the sound of John submerging into the water and the silence that follows as he floats on his back like me. I let the gentle stillness of the secluded pond seep into me, making me impossibly still. I don’t drift; the only movement my body makes is the slow lift of my lungs as I breathe in and out. I angle my head back so the water covers my closed eyelids, but not so far that I can’t breathe. The water even closes up my ears, and I can hear the subtle yawn of the sea as she awakens for the day.
I shift my body to a vertical position slowly, letting my feet find the sand, and I wipe the water from my eyes. John is still floating a small distance from me, but his body is taut, tense. His arms shift back and forth as he struggles to keep his body afloat, and his eyes are scrunched closed, tiny wrinkles forming at the sides as he fights against this exercise.
Determined to find the source of his resistance, I ask, “What do you feel?”
“Cold,” he says.
I groan inwardly. “What else?”
“Wet.”
He’s not going to learn anything about navigating the seas if he doesn’t learn to trust the water. If he doesn’t trust the winds or the clouds or the sky and all the things the world is trying to tell him. I think about what he does trust, hoping to use it as a starting point. James Cook? His ship? His sailors?
Me?
I wade through the water towards him and position myself near the top of his head, carefully reaching out with my hands to cradle it. His eyes shoot open, and his body jolts at my touch, but the moment his eyes meet mine, he relaxes again.
“Shh,” I whisper. I spread my fingers along his scalp, rubbing gently to coax him to trust me. Trust that I won’t let anything happen to him. That he can release his will to me.
John closes his eyes again, the muscles along his neck relaxing as he lowers his head into my hands. The rest of his body follows, easing into a stillness that involves releasing himself to the water, not fighting against it. It’s only me and the ocean holding him up now, not him. There is no current in the pool, but his body sways back and forth anyway, creating a calm rhythm that I think must be a conversation he’s having with the sea.
I tilt his head back slightly to let the water rise above his ears and over his eyes. He doesn’t resist or try to break free. Instead, he releases a breath in slight surprise at the sensation. He really does trust me. And that’s a good thing. I’ll need to place him in more precarious situations than this if he is to learn to navigate properly. I don’t know that I could have established such trust with any of his sailors in so short a time. John, who was once my hostage, is now a friend. Perhaps that’s still too generous a word, but I’ve nothing else to describe the relationship between us.
I raise his head just enough so he can hear me when I ask him again, “What do you feel?”
He takes a moment to answer. “Cold,” he repeats.
I frown, frustrated he’s not putting as much effort into this as I thought. But then he continues.
“She’s cold from the absence of the sun. Of hours spent in the dark. Alone. Without his warmth. But he greets her on the horizon, a sunrise kiss.” He pauses. “She’s reluctant at first, still cold, still lonely. But he persists, and she can’t help but greet him with an embrace, letting his warmth seep into her. Slowly, but steadily.”
He opens his eyes and looks at me. “Eventually she will be filled with such warmth, she’ll forget he’s to abandon her again. It’s a dance that repeats itself again and again, but for a moment, she allows herself to be with him as though time were something you could pause forever. And she dreams of never being cold again.”
His words are beautiful and stir something inside me. “I think you would make a good chanter,” I say. “I would have mistaken those words for a song. How can someone who’s just recently learned our language use it so effectively?”
John shifts upright, finds his feet, and turns to me. “It’s not hard when you have the right inspiration.”
It’s my turn to blush. I run my hand along the surface of the water. “She’s amazing, isn’t she?”
“Yes, she is.” John clears his throat. “The water. The ocean. She makes quite an impression.”
“I’m glad you like her. But I was serious about you spending the day in here. Immerse yourself.” I begin to walk toward the beach.
“Where are you going?”
“To give you time alone with her,” I say, as though teasing him about his lover. “I’m afraid I’m too much of a distraction for you. She’s liable to become jealous.” But a part of me thinks it’s really him who’s too much of a distraction for me.
He doesn’t respond, as though he agrees with me, and it’s no use to fight it. He moves onto his back to float in the water again.
I escape my chores periodically to spy on John, pleased to see he’s still in the water each time I check on him. Splashing the surface with his cupped hands, blowing air along the surface to create bubbles, exploring the surface of the rock’s face both above and below the waterline. And floating on his back again and again, adjusting as the tide rises and the movement of water within the pond becomes more pronounced.
At midday, I bring him a basket of roasted breadfruit and raw fish. It’s much softer than the taro and dried fish I fed him the other night and hopefully easier for him to chew as his injuries continue to heal. I motion for John to join me on shore, and he sits in the sand next to me, the basket of food between us.
“Thank you,” he says, picking up a chunk of golden breadfruit, the bumpy rough skin still attached on one end. “I’m so hungry.”
“Careful,” I scold, shoving his shoulder away. “You’ll drip salt water over everything.”
He responds by shaking his head back and forth like an animal, spraying me and our lunch at the same time. My mouth falls open, but John just laughs, his mouth full of half-chewed breadfruit.
“One morning spent without your uniform and you’ve turned into a boar,” I say, teasing. I lay a strip of fish on a length of breadfruit and take a small bite.
“My apologies for my ravenous behavior,” he says. “I never imagined spending hours doing nothing but sitting or floating in a child’s pool would weaken me so.” He points toward the water.
“You’re exposed,” I say.
John glances down at himself to make sure he still has some clothing on.
“No.” I point to the sky. “I mean the sun, the wind, the water. You’re not used to being outside, fully exposed to the elements, for so long. It’s natural for the world to steal your energy in the process.”
John nods and takes another bite. “I’ll probably burn, too.”
“You’re accustomed to exposure as a sailor on a ship. Often for months at a time,” I add, remembering what he told me about his sailing experience. “The sea may beat you up a bit at first. Until you really get to know her well.” I glance at him, his disheveled hair, the water dripping off his back, the pink hue to his cheeks and shoulders that wasn’t there this morning. “So what have you learned?”
“She’s a beast,” he says. “Unassuming. Surprisingly agile. But she can come at you with unexpected ferocity. She’s a force that isn’t to be tamed, only allowed to be understood one secret at a time. And only when she gives her permission.”
“That’s good,” I say. “And all this came to you while you were playing in a child’s pool?”
“You know this place is more than that.”
I wait for him to explain.
“The tide came in slowly. The water rose, and with it, its movement, its response to her swell. It wasn’t long before the rock wall itself couldn’t keep her back, and the waves washed over the top of it and into the little lagoon.”
I glance out to the rocks where John points, the tide still high, the waves still pushing past the barrier into the pool.
“And not calming flows of water over the ridge,” he continues. “But a meeting with a clash and a roar and a burst of white. Water entangling with the air to create a visual chaos before falling with equal violence on the other side.” He slaps his palm to his knee, remembering what it was like to be in the water. “No longer still. No longer calm. She wasn’t whispering to me anymore. This was a woman shouting, refusing to be ignored. Unafraid to remind me of how insignificant I was. Pushing me against the rocks. Making me work harder and harder to keep my balance.”
“Perhaps she is angry with you,” I say.
John looks at me. “No, not angry. She’s testing me. I think she wants me to learn.” He keeps a straight face, making sure I know he’s serious and not teasing with his words. “She wants me to know her. But I have to earn it.”
“Then perhaps this is her way of making you stronger,” I say. “After all, isn’t it through obstacles and adversity that we are able to learn best? Having gone through the trial, we become more knowledgeable, stronger than we had once been.”
“Yes,” John says, looking back out to the water. “I think you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” I say, a note of teasing in my voice. “I’m the teacher. I’m always right.”
John laughs before taking another bite of breadfruit.
“And I look forward to seeing what she wants to teach you after lunch,” I add. “Hurry and eat.”
He smiles and then salutes me, the way I’ve seen some of the sailors do to him. “Yes, ma’am.”
We eat the rest of the meal in silence, and I think teaching him to navigate might not be as difficult as I thought.
I’m embarrassed to admit that the amount of time I spent in the water today is likely more than the total amount of time I’ve spent in the water on all three voyages with Cook combined. Though at first reluctant, I eased in to a familiarity with the sea that both taught me how little I knew of her as well as how much I looked forward to experiencing more.
I also hadn’t realized until now how intimate Maile was with the ocean. She’s spoken of navigating by the stars and observing nature before, but the news that she was an expert came as a surprise. I can see it in her eyes, though. And the way she carries herself. She’s different when she’s in the water. More alive, somehow. It’s a wonder to see her in her element.
Ikaika was the chief’s prime navigator, so it makes sense that he taught Maile all he knew. They were engaged. Of course they were close. I wonder how she feels about having to pass Ikaika’s teachings on to me now—the man who killed him. She said she didn’t mind being with me or even teaching me about wayfinding, but a part of me thinks I should tell the chief what I did. That I was the one who killed his navigator, and that Maile saw it happen. Then maybe he wouldn’t force her to work with me. It’s not fair that she has to spend all her time with the man she should despise most.
