Steel

“Oh my God, is she okay? Is she all right?”

Jill recognized her mother’s voice.

Then she was hanging over the side of a modern fiberglass boat with a big motor, the kind that ferried tourists around the Bahamas. The kind of boat she’d fallen out of at the start. The sun was high in the sky, just as it had been, the storm clouds were off in the distance, but not threatening. Her father and the tour guide held her, gripping her shirt and arms, making sure she didn’t slide back into the water. The guide also held a ring-style life preserver, and a couple more of the boat tour people stood to the side. The boat’s engine grumbled, keeping them steady and in one place.

Jill gasped for breath, but she wanted to laugh. She was in her clamdiggers and tank top, just like before. Everything was just like before, like none of it had happened. Like she’d fallen overboard and been fished out in her own world, her own time, in a matter of seconds. Except that her other arm, the one not hooked over the side of the boat, still held Edmund Blane’s sword.

She swung her leg over to climb fully aboard. Everyone looked so scared. Her father hugged her and pulled her up—and didn’t let her go. She hugged him back, one-armed, tight as she could. She was home.

“Jill, are you all right? What happened? Are you hurt?” Dad said, over and over. She’d never heard him sound so worried.

Before she could answer, her brother pointed at her and exclaimed. “Jeez, where’d you get that?”

Everyone stared as Jill pulled away from her father’s grip and regarded the weapon in her hand. It was definitely Edmund Blane’s, with the same sleek blade and graceful swept hilt. But the whole thing was covered with rust—rough, dark black, soaked with slime and seawater. It was ancient, corroded; it might have been sitting on the ocean floor for, oh—three hundred years?

And how did she explain it all? How did she tell them what had happened to her? They’d never believe it, any more than Cooper’s crew would believe where she’d come from. They’d think she was crazy. They’d check her for a head injury. And maybe they’d be right to think she was crazy. Surely it couldn’t have happened.

But she remembered it so clearly. All of it. The smell of the Diana, the sails rippling overhead, the noise of cannon fire, battling with Edmund Blane, kissing Henry—

She could never tell them about it.

“It was on the bottom,” Jill said, still catching her breath. “I saw it and just reached for it.”

She held the sword in both hands, so they all could see. Her mother and father were at her sides, and her siblings pressed closed. The rest of the tourists on the cruise gathered around wonderingly, and the grizzled tour guide studied the artifact admiringly.

“That’s amazing,” someone said. “How long do you think it’s been down there?”

“Look how rusted it is.”

“Where do you think it came from?”

“It’s from a pirate ship, I bet,” her brother said.

Jill glanced at her brother and hid a smile.

“I suppose we ought to take it to a museum,” her mother said.

Reflexively, Jill took a tighter grip on the sword. She could see it, this piece of history sitting in a display case in a museum somewhere, right where it belonged, next to a placard explaining its date and place of origin and what it said about the seafaring world of the eighteenth-century Bahamas, locked away from people and no one watching over it once the museum closed—and Blane somehow finding a way to steal it back. She told Captain Cooper she’d keep it safe. A museum, with its guards and alarms, ought to be safe. But Jill didn’t want to let it go.

“Do we have to?” Jill said, trying to explain. “I mean, this is like my own history. I’m a fencer. The weapons I use, my épées—they evolved from this, the kind of fighting I do came from this. It’s like I was meant to find it. You know? Like I fell overboard just to find this.” She turned hopefully to the tour guide. If anyone would know what should legally happen to the sword, it was him.

After a moment of thought, he smiled at her. “Law of salvage, kid. As far as I’m concerned, it’s yours. But let’s get it in a cooler, it needs to stay in water until we can get it to someone who can do some restoration on it.” He emptied out the long cooler of its ice and sodas—cold sodas. Jill almost lunged for one. But there’d be time for that soon enough. After filling the cooler with ocean water, Jill set the sword inside. It barely fit diagonally.

“Mom, Dad, it’s okay if I keep this, right?”

They both had their hands on her shoulders, unwilling to let go, as if reassuring themselves that she was safe. Her mother ran a hand over her wet hair. Jill didn’t mind.

“I suppose any museums we could show it to have a lot better-looking rapiers than this,” her father said. “It’s pretty rusted over.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Jill said.

She started shivering, because she was still wet through, and a cool wind was blowing over the water. The kind of wind that would catch sails and drive a well-rigged schooner across the sea. One of the crew found a blanket for her, and she sat huddled in the cabin to dry off and get warm. Her parents still kept to her side. And Jill still couldn’t stop smiling.

“You seem awfully happy for having almost drowned,” Mom said.

Jill had to agree.

Epilogue