Steel

So what did she do now?

Captain Cooper kept the piece of rapier. Not that the thing had been much of a good luck charm for Jill. But the captain wouldn’t explain why it was important, why it wasn’t just a scrap of metal.

She slept in the captain’s own bed—“Just for now, don’t be getting any pretty ideas”—a mattress in a wooden frame, with rough sheets and a heavy wool blanket. Jill thought she should have slept heavily for hours. But the ship’s movements kept her awake. Slow, arrhythmic swaying, rocking her one way and another on the hard mattress that might have been stuffed with straw. She started to feel nauseated and wasn’t sure it was all from the boat’s rocking. Shutting her eyes tight, she tried not to think of it.

Jill slept lightly and with dreams of falling, of being underwater and not being able to swim. She was a good swimmer; nothing should have been able to keep her from the surface. But something was holding her down, anchoring her. And she thrashed awake; the dreaming sense of vertigo didn’t go away. She was still on a ship surrounded by strangers, uncertain of the place and time. She’d never felt so helpless.

Well, she’d wanted to get away from everyone, hadn’t she?

The motion of the ship had increased, rolling so much that the lantern hanging from the roof beam swung back and forth, and she would have slammed against the bed’s frame if she hadn’t braced herself. Nothing was loose in the cabin—everything was shut up in cupboards, and the table and floor were clear. Anything loose would be falling all around her. The ship seemed to be riding over hills, making animal-like groans around her.

She was going to throw up. Her stomach seemed to be lurching in the opposite direction from the ship, and though she covered her mouth with her hands, she couldn’t stop it. Bile surged up.

A bucket—solid wood, heavy and stable—stood against the wall. As if it had been set there in expectation. She stumbled out of bed and bent over it without looking inside, just in time. She heaved over and over, losing everything she’d eaten that day, and then some. She wouldn’t have thought he

r stomach could hold so much.

Then the acrid stench of it hit her and made her heave again.

Finally, she turned away, sitting heavily, her back to the wall, catching her breath. She wiped her mouth on the tail of her shirt because it was all she had. Her cup of water was gone—of course, it would have emptied all over the cabin by now. Dizzy, her choices were to keel over, go to sleep and never wake up again, or go outside and get some fresh air. Assuming she could look ahead without her vision swaying in front of her.

Using the frame of the bed, she pulled herself to her feet. Her first step made her stumble—the floor wasn’t where it should have been. To go the straight line from the bed to the door, she made a zigzagging path across the floor, following the ship’s rocking. But she reached the door and leaned there, shutting her eyes and catching her breath, determined not to be sick again. Doggedly, she gripped the latch on the door and opened it.

Captain Marjory Cooper, her smile crooked and her gaze hard, stood blocking her way. “I heard you were up. Feeling better then?”

Jill swallowed, hoping to keep her stomach steady. But she didn’t dare open her mouth, just in case. The captain pushed her back into the cabin.

“You’ve not spent much time at sea, have you?”

Jill shook her head and tried to guess if Cooper’s smile was meant to be comforting or mocking.

She had in hand a few pieces of clothing: a loose, long-sleeved shirt, cotton pants, and a soft cap. The clothing Jill arrived in wasn’t so out of place here—her clamdiggers were like the trousers that many of the sailors on board wore, and her tank top was just a shirt. But the captain handed her the new items.

“You’ll burn like a lobster in the sun in those things. You need to cover up until you get a good tan on you. It’ll keep the men from looking too hard at you as well. These should fit you. They’re cabin-boy sized.”

Reluctantly, Jill took the clothing. Changing clothes made her situation—lost at sea on a boat full of strangers—seem permanent. She felt like a prisoner. She ought to get out of here—and go where? “What’s going to happen to me?”

“We’ll have to discuss that, won’t we? When you’re dressed, come up on deck.”

Jill was actually happy to get out of the scratchy, salt-laden clothes she’d nearly drowned in. But she thought she looked like a bum in the loose clothes. No—she looked like a pirate. She kept her bra on—it made her feel a little more like herself. Like it could shield her. She also brought out the rapier, which she’d kept with her on the bunk. Since no one said anything, she was going to carry the weapon.

When she opened the door and came out on the deck, she hesitated, amazed.

All the sails were unfurled, and the wind filled them. Above her, a collage of rippling white canvas rose up on tall masts. Bright sun gleamed on them, almost blinding. Beyond them, the sky was blue, and white specks—seagulls—danced and wheeled in the wind above the ship. Around her was ocean, wide and blue, and the ship skimmed across waves, sleek as a fish. She reached up and felt wind brushing her fingers, ruffling her hair. For a moment, she felt like she could step into the air and float.

“You! Lass! Over here!” The captain called to her from the back of the ship, on the other side of the hatch and stairs leading below. There was an honest-to-God wheel here, half her height, with handles protruding off the spokes. Just like in the movies. This was all like a movie. She had to be dreaming.

Cooper had tied a piece of string around the middle of the rapier shard so that it dangled, balanced and horizontal. She held the end of the string at arm’s length and watched, along with the two men with her—the bald man from the rowboat and another, dark-skinned, his hair in long braids tied back with a bandanna. He gave Jill a smile, and she looked away.

Though the ship rocked and shifted, the rapier tip remained pointing in one direction.

That wasn’t possible, the way it remained motionless, frozen in place despite dangling in midair. It was just a piece of metal…. Jill stared at it. She wanted to touch it, feel the surface again, just to be sure. But she’d have had to reach past Captain Cooper to do it, so she didn’t.

The shard had been cleaned and oiled—very little of the rust remained, though the steel was still rough and corroded, with a reddish sheen of tarnished metal. But a pattern was visible now, curling lines like waves engraved on the flat of the blade.

“It’ll be our compass,” the captain explained, at Jill’s wondering expression. “It wants to return to its master. And however far it’s traveled, you’ve brought it right back, girl, haven’t you?”

“I don’t know how I got here,” Jill said. She kept telling her, and Cooper kept not believing her. “How is it doing that?”