The Ship Beyond Time Read online

  Slate only laughed. “Do your worst!” he shouted into the wind. “I dare you!”

  “Aim!”

  The fog curdled, darker still, and thunder grumbled a warning. What was worse, the storm ahead or the ship behind?

  But then Billie scrambled toward starboard side, barking furiously. There, in the bank of fog, turbid tendrils of mist were twisting up from the surface like fingers—like tentacles. The water seemed to boil as something dark and heavy bodied rose from the deep.

  A cry went up from the crew of the steamer, and I risked a glance back. Order broke down as men aimed at the shadows, firing at will. They were close enough that I could see the wide white panic in their eyes.

  Bullets zipped in the air like bees; I crouched at my father’s feet as the mist of the Margins swallowed us whole. Then Slate cried out—I blinked up at him in the sudden darkness. His face was pale in the gloom; he clutched his left side.

  Blood was leaking through his fingers.

  “Dad!” I sprang to my feet, reaching for him . . . as something fell to the quarterdeck beside me, thick and heavy as the mast.

  But it glistened—and moved.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Black flesh like wet leather—and underneath, rows of suckers the size of saucers. The tentacle writhed and coiled over the boards. Then it lashed around my ankle like a whip, and I screamed.

  Billie raced across the deck to sink her teeth into the creature’s flesh, but the tentacle only tightened; a dozen suckers ripped at my skin. I scrabbled at the stem of the wheel, but the creature dragged me across the deck.

  “Amira!” Kashmir ran after me, his long knife shining in the gloam. With one slash, he severed the tip of the tentacle. In its dying throes, it curled around my leg, but I scooted backward, kicking, and it fell away. Billie dragged it off with a growl as the rest of it flopped and twisted, slithering back into the roiling sea.

  Breathing hard, Kashmir reached for me. I let him pull me to my feet, his hand so warm in mine. “Are you all right?” He murmured the words into my hair; I could smell the clove on his breath.

  “Fine,” I said, dizzy with fear and relief and the closeness of him. “But Slate—Slate’s hurt.”

  Kash glanced at the captain, a furrow forming between his dark brows. In an instant, his expression changed to surprise as another tentacle slung over the rail to wind around his waist. Lightning flashed, and odd colors rippled over the creature’s flesh. It pulled—and Kashmir’s hand slipped from mine.

  His knife clattered to the deck as he disappeared over the side.

  “Kash!” Thunder rumbled, drowning out my scream. I rushed toward the rail, ready to leap into the dark water, but something grabbed me roughly by the arm and hauled me back.

  My father.

  With a cry, I shoved him away. He reeled, still reaching for me with bloody hands; the ship spun like a weathervane with no one at the wheel. “Nixie,” he gasped. “He’s gone!”

  The words hit me like a slap, but Billie started howling again, and before I could respond, I was thrown to my knees. The Temptation bucked like a wild thing as another tentacle heaved onto the deck.

  It wound like a vine around the foremast. With a crack, the boom snapped, and the wet sail dropped over the squirming limb. Rotgut shouted curses from his perch in the crow’s nest as a second tentacle shook the main mast. A third wrapped itself around the captain’s right arm. Slate snarled like a dog, sinking his teeth into the monster’s slick flesh. The thing flinched, releasing him, and my father reached out for me. But I scrambled to my feet, swearing. “Just take the damn wheel!”

  He stumbled back toward the helm as another wave hit us—this time over the bow—sending white spray high overhead as the tentacle undulated on the deck. Leaping over it, I pressed myself against the bulwark, ready to follow Kashmir over the side—but there he was, clinging to the rungs of the ladder embedded in the stern.

  “Kashmir!” My voice was thick with relief, but he could not respond; the creature had a tentacle cinched around his chest, crushing the air from his lungs as waves crashed over his head. “Hold on!”

  Fumbling on the deck, I grabbed his knife and wrapped my hands around the hilt. I leaned out over the bulwark, slashing downward, but the blade bounced off the monster’s leathery skin; had I swung with the dull edge? I changed my grip, but the creature released him to reach for me. Screaming, I hacked at the thing, and it wriggled away. Gritting his teeth, Kash hooked one elbow over the rail. Before he could pull himself back to the deck, the beast yanked him down again.

  The sound of gunfire split the air as Bee leveled her revolver. The creature flailed, slamming a tentacle down at her feet. Boards splintered, but she stood her ground to reload until another arm reared up and knocked her backward. Bee rolled across the deck, her gun tumbling overboard.

  Another tentacle swung past me to grasp the stem of the wheel. Slate stomped on it, swearing, while Bee wrestled with the arm winding about her torso. Billie danced across the deck, ripping into a coiling limb. But the stern sank lower as the dark bulk of the thing rose up from the water, looming through the fog.

  Eyes bigger than my head gleamed in a flash of electric blue as the creature poured over the bulwark. It was enormous—the body alone taller than I was. There was another crack of thunder, and Kash cried out as one hand slipped free; he swung by his fingers as the ship tilted on the rising sea.

  Waves drenched the deck. Another minute and the monster would capsize us, dragging us all down to the ocean floor. But it was like a hydra—each time I swung the blade, another arm appeared. The knife felt like a toothpick in my hand as I stared into the creature’s eyes, the pupils flat like a goat’s.

  The eyes . . . the eyes. A thought . . . a memory came to me, something I’d read once: Hawaiian fishermen killed octopus by biting them between the eyes. Why was I hacking at the limbs? With a grimace, I drew back the knife and plunged it hilt-deep into the bulbous head.

  A gout of black fluid washed the deck, darker than blood; the tentacles writhed like a nest of snakes. One caught me across the stomach, flinging me back. Dazed and gasping, I stared up as the arms fell slack around me. Was that a patch of night sky through the fog?

  Relief came in a wave. If the mist was clearing, that meant we were nearly safe out of the Margins. As I lay there, the beast slid off the stern, limp and liquid, and sank into the deep, and the ship rose in the water. Pushing myself to my knees, I sucked in a breath. Then I staggered to the rail, ready to pull Kashmir up from the ladder.

  He was gone.

  For a moment I couldn’t make sense of it. I stared, stupidly, at the empty ladder, at the churning wake, at the thinning fog.

  No.

  No, no, no, no, no no no—

  I didn’t stop. I didn’t think. I vaulted off the stern, hitting the dark waves like a hammer. The shattered sea collapsed over my head, but I fought the water, struggling upward, kicking frantically, finally bursting into the murky air.

  “Kash!” I choked—my first call was drowned by the next wave. I spat. “Kashmir!”

  Where was he? The ship had slowed in the storm. Still, it was sailing on faster than a man could swim. The fog swirled around me—I couldn’t see farther than my fingertips—but that was good, that was good. We were both still in the Margins.

  Salt stung in my wounds like the tail of a jellyfish; there must be blood in the water, and not only mine. Was there another monster lurking in the dark, drawn by the flesh and the fray?

  Through the mist, someone was screaming my name—my father’s voice. I swam in the opposite direction. Beside me, something large splashed on the surface. I shrieked, but it was only a buoy thrown from the ship. I slid my arm through the center and carried it with me as I swam. How long was the rope? Glancing back over my shoulder, there was nothing; the Temptation had vanished in the tattered fog . . . or out of it.

  I had to find Kashmir before I followed.

  “Kash!”

  He ha
d to be here. Or had the creature taken him under? I slammed my mind on the question, like the door to a tomb.

  “Kashmir!”

  Something brushed my leg and I bit back a cry. It was only the rope, wrapped around my ankle. All around me, the fog was clearing. I ducked under to loosen the loop from my leg, and when I resurfaced, I heard his voice.

  “Amira!”

  I whirled around, splashing. Kashmir’s voice was faint over the shush and roar of the waves, but I kicked toward it with a single-minded purpose. I had to reach him, now or never. Throwing my shoulder forward, I cut through the water, dragging the buoy along. I dreaded a tug on the rope. What would I do if Kash had drifted beyond my reach?

  The answer came to mind immediately; I would let go of the buoy. If the Temptation left the Margins without me, I might never see her again—nor Bee and Rotgut, nor my father. But I kept swimming, and at the top of the next wave, I saw him in the watery valley.

  “Kash!”

  “Amira?” In his wide eyes, relief chased away the panic.

  The wave dropped and he was closer; he kicked toward me on the next swell and I toward him. I pushed the buoy into his hands and just like that, he was in my arms. “I’ve got you!”

  “I thought I—” he sputtered, gasping. “I thought I’d never see you again.”

  “I’m here,” I said, pulling him close just as the rope on the buoy stretched taut. “I’ll always be here.”

  He stopped trying to speak, but I could feel his hot breath in the crook of my neck and the thunder of his heart against my chest. The dark sea had calmed, but I held him fiercely. We floated up the next wave and down its back. We might have drifted forever, storm tossed but safe in each other’s arms. But the fog around us was melting into the night air, revealing the Temptation. My father was at the stern, hauling on the rope with all his might.

  Bee threw down another rope for Kash; I looped it around his torso before sending him up the ladder. Water sluiced from his clothes, and there was a long strand of seaweed wrapped around one leg. His arms, usually so steady, shook as he climbed, so I stayed close behind him, murmuring encouragement.

  Near the top, Bee and Slate lifted him the rest of the way. He tumbled over the bulwark and landed flat on the deck. Billie bounded toward him, trying to lick his face, but Bee pushed her off to check Kashmir’s breathing while Slate turned back and pulled me single-handedly over the rail. I started toward Kash, still needing him close, but the captain crushed me in an embrace so tight he squeezed water out of my clothes.

  “I’m sorry, Nixie,” he whispered fiercely. “I’m so sorry. I thought today was the day,”

  I hugged him back, trying to comfort him; he must have been scared, too. “What day, Dad?”

  “The day you lose Kashmir.”

  I stiffened, but he did not let go. “What are you talking about, Slate?”

  “I told you from the start not to get too close to him.” The words came in a whisper; I could smell his sour breath. “That he won’t be around forever.”

  A flash of rage, like lightning. “How dare you say that?” I pushed him, hard, and he released me. “You, of all people?”

  But as he stumbled back, my anger ebbed. His shirt was bloody and torn, his face waxy and pale in the dark. And in his eyes, an infinite sadness. “You think I’m just being cruel?” My father shook his head. “It wasn’t only my fortune Joss told.”

  Though the storm had passed and the water was calm, I felt the world seesaw. “She told you about me?” Joss—Navigator, fortune-teller. My grandmother too, though I hadn’t known it at first. I’d thought she was a charlatan, until the things she’d told me came true. But of course they had; everything she’d predicted, she’d already watched happen as she traveled back and forth across the years. “What did she say?”

  Slate opened his mouth to reply, but then he bent double and vomited noisily over the rail.

  I swore, rushing to his side as his shoulders shook. Away across the vast blackness of the waves, a glassy skyline glittered; he’d gotten us to his own timeline, twenty-first-century New York.

  Not Tahiti, then. But maybe that was for the best.

  “Dad . . .” I touched his side, my hands gentle, plucking at the blood-soaked fabric of his shirt; the bullet had dug a furrow through his flesh, skipping along his ribs like a stone. It wasn’t life-threatening—but where would I have been shot, if I’d still been at the helm? Under my fingers, Slate’s skin was clammy, and his whole body trembled. “We’ll get you to the hospital.”

  “No!” Clumsily, he threw my hand off. “No hospitals.”

  I rounded on him. “What’s wrong with you? You need stitches, you need medicine—”

  “Oh, yeah?” He laughed coarsely as he struggled out of his shirt. Wadding it up, he wiped the blood from his tattooed flesh. Under the ink, it was pale as smoke. “Like painkillers?”

  “You could still go to the hospital. Just tell them you don’t want any drugs.”

  “You think so?” He smiled darkly, his voice bitter, and I realized how naive I must have sounded. He hadn’t been clean for years—maybe not since my mother died. Who was he, without his opium? Had I ever known my own father?

  Oblivious to my scrutiny, Slate leaned heavily against the bulwark and spat into the water, wiping his mouth with his arm. Then he closed his eyes and put his forehead down on the rail. “It’s more blood than guts. I don’t die today. I know my fate. I’ll see her again.”

  He spoke the words like a dreadful incantation—a prayer, or a curse. My father loved my mother. I knew it like I knew the position of the stars, or the pitch of the deck. His search for her had defined the last sixteen years—the entirety of my existence, for her life had ended as mine began. She was his safe harbor . . . or, more accurately, his white whale. Giving her up would be infinitely harder than giving up the drugs. His knuckles were pale as he gripped the brass. Was he trying to convince me, or himself?

  After a long moment, he gritted his teeth and pushed himself upright. Then he turned from the rail and swore. “What are you looking at?”

  I blinked, but he wasn’t talking to me. Following his stare, my stomach sank like an anchor. There he was, standing in the open doorway of the captain’s cabin: Blake Hart, the boy from 1884.

  He still wore his nineteenth-century suit, very dapper once, though the hat he used to wear had gone missing somewhere back in Honolulu. Billie trotted up to him, wagging her tail slowly, but Blake ignored her, staring at the electric gleam of the glass fantasy of Manhattan. Over his shoulder, the green copper figure of Lady Liberty raised her spotlighted torch; back in his native time, Blake would not have even heard of her. “Send these, the homeless, tempest- tossed, to me,” I said under my breath.

  “What?” Blake’s face was white, and his voice cracked when he spoke. “What is this place?”

  I tried to smile. “Welcome to New York.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Fifty years ago, Slate had been born during a blackout in this protean city; when he was a child, he had watched the Bronx burn. New York had changed a lot since then—so much so that some longtimers found it unrecognizable. But even they would have felt more at home in the city than a boy from a bygone kingdom.

  A speedboat roared past us, the prow painted with leering teeth, the laughing shrieks of the passengers drowned out by the motor. A helicopter whuffed overhead, seeking the latest news. We passed a garbage barge heading south; the stench wafted to us along with the screams of the gulls. And Blake stood dazed on the main deck as the salt of the Atlantic curled his golden hair. “Where are we, Miss Song? And where are all the stars?”

  I followed his eyes to the orangey-blue bruise of the city night. A myth came to mind: a man cast out of paradise. But would any god be so cruel as to throw someone from Eden into New York City?

  As I stood there, hesitating, it was Kashmir who took his arm. “Come, Mr. Hart. You should still be resting. Let’s get you downstairs.”

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nbsp; “He can have my cabin,” I said suddenly, remembering a day, nearly three years ago, when I’d done the same thing for Kash. He too had come aboard with nothing but the clothes on his back; now he steered Blake toward the hatch with a surprisingly gentle hand. Perhaps they had more in common than I’d thought.

  Slate disappeared into his room, leaving Bee to take the helm; as he flopped down on his bunk, I retrieved my cell phone from the secret cupboard where we kept the radio. When I powered it on, the date showed as August second.

  The city slid by as the Temptation limped toward the dock at Red Hook; we only had two working sails, and the wind was sluggish. The summer humidity was as thick as the mist of the Margins, and the salt dried slowly on my skin. By the time we made fast to the wharf, it was near midnight. The rest of the crew went below to find their bunks, but I ducked back into the captain’s cabin to check on my father. I found him sprawled on the bed, one arm flung over his eyes, Billie curled up beside him.

  I wrinkled my nose; there was a sour smell in the room. It wafted up from the messy bucket at his bedside; at least he’d changed it out for the hamper. He’d tossed his bloody shirt to the floor. Beside it: a sewing kit, the first aid box, and a half-empty tube of antibacterial ointment curled next to its cap.

  Using an excess of medical tape, Slate had secured a slapdash bandage on his left side, right beside the tattoo of the swallow over his heart. Swallows always returned to their nests; sailor superstition said to get one inked before you set out on your journey. The second one was for when you finally came home.

  He only had one.

  I watched his breathing for a while. It was slow and even—that was a relief. But the heat in the room was making my skin prickle, and Slate had the covers up to his chest. I approached his bedside on quiet feet; still, he stirred.

  “Nixie?” Slate shifted his arm so he could peer at me through the gloom in the cabin. “Is that you?”

  “I’m here.” Reaching out, I touched his forehead with the back of my hand; it was warm. “You’re going to get an infection, Dad.”