Free The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig Page A

on the page to keep my place. “I could test them out if you’d let me take the helm.”
    “Ask your father,” Bee said, flashing her teeth.
    “Come on, Bee. What’s the worst that could happen?”
    Bee laughed then, a sound like a rasp. “I have some theories. Let’s not test them.”
    Her answer wasn’t unexpected; this wasn’t the first time we’d had this exchange. I went back to my paper. “Mortality afflicting their race . . .”Ah, here. “The princess lies in state under black feather kahilis made from the glossy plumage of the o’o bird—”
    “Nixiiiieeeee!”
    The captain’s voice was harsh and braying. We all froze, Kashmir with a piece of fish halfway to his mouth.
    “Nix!” The slurred voice was muffled behind the thick mahogany of the door.
    I stood, but Bee raised her hand. “Let me.” She walked over to the closed door and knocked. “Captain?”
    Only silence. Rotgut took another swig of wine. She knocked again, louder. “Captain, are you all right?”
    “Where’s my daughter?” came the shout, but the door didn’t open. Another silence, Several ships away, someone was playing the harmonica with more bravery than skill.
    “Nix?” His voice came again, soft, pleading. I strode over, my feet landing hard on the decking. Kash tried to grab my arm, but I shrugged him off.
    “What do you want?” I shouted through the door.
    There was a long pause. “I see her.”
    “Who?”
    Silence.
    “Captain?” I knocked with my fist. “Captain!”
    Nothing.
    Fine. Fine. I kicked the door; thinking it was still locked. But it flew open, and there was Slate, staring up at me from the floor. Lank hair was plastered to his forehead; his eyes were rimmed in red, and the blue of the iris was a slim halo around the black holes of his pupils. The heavy odor of sweat crawled into my nostrils. Beside him on the floor was the box. My fingers itched to grab the whole mess, to hurl it into the sea: the things he loved best, gone in an instant. Instead I tightened my grip on the doorknob. “Go to sleep, Slate.”
    He blinked slowly at me and sat up, crossing his legs. “Come in,” he said, almost politely.
    “I am in.” I spread my hands, standing there on the threshold.
    “No, come here. I want to show you something.” He opened the box, and the implements gleamed in the low light. My lip curled.
    “Slate, I don’t want—” I was stepping back out the door,but he had pulled out the map of 1866.
    “You should.” He unfolded the paper with excruciating care, his face intent, and laid it across his lap. “You should see.”
    I hesitated. I’d never actually seen the old map, he was so protective of that box. Stepping slowly back into the room, I closed the door, but only halfway. “What is it?”
    “It is . . . what was.” The map was faded at the creases, almost torn in places, from being folded and unfolded so many times. “Here,” he said, stroking the page with one finger.
    I took a step closer to see.
    “We took out a flat a block away from Chinatown. You could smell the ocean, and there was a little garden in the back. Your mother ripped up the rose bushes and planted bitter greens. The landlord was pissed, but the roses had been dying anyway. The air was too salty for them.”
    The boards beneath me creaked as I shifted on my feet. He never, ever spoke about her.
    “I can see her now.” His eyes slid shut, and he smiled crookedly. “God, she was beautiful. And she knew it too.”
    I only stared at him. He had no pictures of her, of course. I used to look in the mirror when I was younger, picking apart my own face—trying to recognize what was his, so Icould discover what might have been hers.
    “I offered her anything,” he went on. “Do you know that? I told her I could take her anywhere, give her whatever she wanted. She only ever asked for one thing.” His eyes snapped open and cut to the box beside him. With sudden violence, he grabbed it and threw it across the