The Edge of the Ocean Page 8

  “What we really need is our suitcase back,” Flick said.

  Avery stretched. “I don’t suppose there’s anything we can do tonight, except try to get some sleep. Shall we have another crack at Jonathan before bed?”

  They went up onto the deck. Jonathan was now sitting on the steps between the lower and upper decks, his knees tucked close to his body. His face was wet with a mixture of tears and sea spray, but he wasn’t crying at that exact moment. He was staring into space.

  Flick and Avery glanced at each other. Flick wanted to go to her friend by herself, but Avery had known Jonathan for longer. She was family. He might need her right now.

  Avery patted him on the knee. “Jonathan? We’re going to get some sleep.”

  “Right,” he said.

  “Jereme said there’s hammocks for us all below decks.”

  Jonathan blinked and raised his head as though it weighed twenty stone. “Hammocks?”

  “I know, I don’t fancy it either.” Avery gave a falsely cheery smile. “What’s wrong with a decent floor, eh?” She held a hand out, and Jonathan took her arm at the wrist, getting to his feet so stiffly it was like he’d taken root. “Come on. You need some rest.”

  Flick followed them, feeling more than slightly useless. “What is wrong with hammocks, anyway?” she asked Avery.

  “If hammocks were so great, the captain would be sleeping in one,” Avery said shrewdly. “I’ll be on the floor.”

  “Then I hope you don’t mind mice.” Jereme had come over, holding a lantern. “Some of them can get very friendly. Just ask Charlie-Two-Toes over there.”

  “Hammocks are great. I’ve always thought so,” Avery said quickly.

  Flick kept an eye on Jonathan as they were herded down to the sleeping quarters. He was walking rather robotically, as if his brain were elsewhere and his body was just doing as it was told by other people. She had never known anyone who had lost someone close to them. She had no idea how to try to make it better.

  The sleeping quarters below deck were warm and stuffy—the sort of atmosphere that makes it difficult to drop off to sleep, and even more difficult to wake up again. The hammocks were surprisingly easy to get into though, and Flick, still wearing her borrowed clothes, was soon settled into one, her own dry clothes on the floor beneath her, ready for the morning.

  In the dark around her, there was only the gentle snore of the pirates, and the occasional sound of something pattering with tiny clawed feet over the dry floorboards.

  Over where Jonathan slept, there was no sound at all.

  Not a single breath, nor a snuffle.

  It was a very loud sort of silence, Flick thought.

  As if someone was trying their very hardest to be quiet as they cried.

  14

  Flick gave it a minute, then climbed down and crept over to Jonathan’s hammock. “Hey. You awake?”

  There was a moist snorting noise from amid a heap of blankets. “Go away.”

  “Oh, all right then, I will. I’ll just leave you here by yourself.” Flick rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. You’re upset.”

  Jonathan’s head appeared from the depths of the covers. “Just leave it, will you?”

  “No.”

  There was a silent stare-off in the darkness.

  Then Jonathan sighed. “Go up on deck. I’ll be a moment.”

  Flick pulled her sneakers back on and climbed the wooden steps to the deck. The Aconite rose and fell on the ebb of the tide, and Flick kept her eyes on the wood beneath her feet to avoid seeing how the horizon bobbed about. Either side of the ship, specks of light glowed in the dark like fireflies. The other ships, Flick realized. They were on the move now, headed around the Break to the Cove of Voices.

  Overhead, the sky was hidden by the billowing sails that stretched into enormous bellies as the wind strained at them. Flick sat up on a crate, and a moment later Jonathan climbed up from below deck, his borrowed jacket buttoned and his boots on, though unlaced. In the glazed light of the moon of another world, his nose and eyes looked pink. He didn’t say anything as he sat up beside her, and for a moment it was nice for it to just be the two of them, the ship rocking the rest of the crew to sleep.

  “I thought he would still be alive.”

  Flick looked up at him.

  “Isn’t that stupid?” Jonathan gave a daft sort of laugh. “But I really thought…” He stopped and looked away, shaking his head. His mouth screwed up as he fought hard not to cry.

  Flick’s chest ached. She reached out and patted Jonathan’s elbow—the only bit of him that didn’t seem off-limits. “It’s not stupid,” she said. “It’s never stupid to hope for something like that.”

  “It wasn’t even hope. It was a fact. In my head. He was still alive, in my head. It’s like finding out our world is as flat as this one. It doesn’t make sense.” He sniffed and took off his glasses before planting his face in his hands. “And to find out like that…”

  “I’m sorry,” Flick said. She didn’t know what else to say. “I really am so sorry.”

  Jonathan just nodded, still hiding his face. “That’s it, then. No more Mercators. No more of us. No more Dad. Just me.” He lifted his head and put his glasses back on. He laced his fingers together and then unlaced them, putting his hands flat on his legs. He didn’t seem to know what to do with himself. “What am I supposed to do now? Sort this mess out?” He gestured vaguely at the ship. “And then what?”

  “Then decide what you want to do with Strangeworlds,” Flick said. “I guess.”

  He sighed and leaned back, knocking his head deliberately on the crate behind. “I know I kept on saying I’m in charge, but it never felt like it. Not really.” He gave her a contemplative look. “When you were kidnapped in Five Lights, do you know why I ended up at Tristyan’s?”

  Flick shook her head.

  “I was looking for a grown-up to ask for help.” Jonathan gave a sad smile. “I needed an adult. A—a parent, really. And I didn’t have one. And it felt awful.” He sniffed. “That’s what it’s going to feel like for the rest of my life, isn’t it?”

  Flick wished she could say no, it won’t, and be certain it wasn’t a lie. But she wasn’t sure. Jonathan was at sea. And she didn’t know how to save him.

  She patted his elbow again. “It’s cheesy, but you’re not on your own, you know. Not really. You’ve got Avery and her parents—”

  “Family so distant I barely remember what they look like.”

  “—and you’ve got me,” Flick finished loudly. Then blushed, feeling embarrassed.

  Jonathan blinked at her behind his sea-spray-splattered glasses.

  “So there,” she said, folding her arms. “And you’re allowed to be sad. That’s okay. You can be as sad as you like for as long as you like. But you’re not on your own.”

  Jonathan nodded.

  Flick smiled at him. “Do you want to talk about your dad?” It seemed like the right thing to ask.

  He huffed out a breath that might have been a laugh. “I don’t really know what there is to say.”

  “Tell me about him. I don’t know anything about him, really, apart from his name.”

  Jonathan was quiet, for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “He’s—he was…” His voice failed at the change of tense, and he stood up and took a few steps, as if he could walk away from whatever he was feeling. “He used to tell me off for leaving books fanned open, instead of using a bookmark,” he said, half smiling. “He was allergic to copper coins, of all things. And he would always manage to flip a pancake perfectly the first try on Pancake Day.” Then he paused. “And… he really loved being a custodian. He wanted to make Strangeworlds somewhere to be proud of, he said.…” He stopped, wincing as the words stuck in his throat.

  “It’s okay,” Flick said. “You don’t have to talk right now.”

  He gave her a sad smile. “Have you ever lost anyone, Felicity?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

 
“I hope you never do,” he said. “When my mother died, I thought I could make it stop hurting by becoming cold-hearted. But it doesn’t work. All that happens is anything else that hurts you chips away at the ice block in your chest until there’s nothing left at all.”

  The wind picked up and there was a spray of saltwater over the side. Flick wished she could think of something clever to say to make things better, but what good were words at a time like this?

  “I can’t believe I’m never going to find him,” Jonathan said. “I really thought he’d be out there, you know? Lost, or waiting. I used to get so bloody angry with him for leaving me, and then I thought… Well, maybe he’s been captured, or he’s injured or sick, and he needs me. Maybe I should be looking for him. Maybe he’s lying somewhere, wondering why I don’t come. Maybe I’m the one who’s letting him down.” His eyes shone, and he wiped them quickly on his sleeve.

  “You don’t know what happened,” Flick said. “But you didn’t let anyone down, Jonathan. This isn’t your fault.”

  “I could have—”

  “No, you couldn’t,” she said quickly. “You had no way of knowing any of this would happen. This isn’t your fault.”

  Jonathan shrugged and scuffed his boots on the deck. “I can’t even think about it, right now. We’re supposed to be getting my suitcase back and then, oh, doing the impossible and getting a few thousand people and their ships off this world. I should probably be concentrating on that.”

  “I’ll concentrate on that,” Flick said. “You need to get some sleep. I’ll think of something.”

  Jonathan raised an eyebrow.

  “Hey, I did last time.”

  “That’s true.” He nodded slowly. “But the Break isn’t a small world like the Waiting Room. And we want to stop it collapsing, not make it happen faster.”

  Flick hopped down from the crate and stretched some blood back into her legs. She held out a hand. “Come on,” she said. “You need to sleep. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?”

  15

  It was still dark when the bell on deck started to clang, though Flick supposed it must be morning by the clock, because she’d at least had a bit of sleep. Far from being nauseating, the rock of the ship was like sleeping in a big bassinet, and the motions of the waves had sent her to sleep. She’d heard no more crying from Jonathan, though she didn’t expect that to be the end of it. Actually, she suspected that the grief she’d seen had barely been the tip of the iceberg. They needed to get him home. Flick flexed her hand in a sort of ghost-grip, reliving the moment the suitcase had been torn from her fingers. They had to talk to Captain Nyfe about searching for it, or else none of them were leaving this world in a hurry.

  Just then, Avery fell out of her hammock and swore loudly, to the amusement of some of the crew.

  “Up you get, girl.” A woman no taller than Flick lifted Avery with one hand. “Those things are the devil to get out of when the Sandman’s glued your eyes shut, they are.”

  Flick climbed out of her own hammock more carefully, and noticed Jonathan had already changed into his own clothes and was lacing his boots. “Did you sleep?”

  “In a fashion,” he said. “My neck seems to have corkscrewed itself into an interesting position.” He rubbed the back of it.

  Flick pulled a sympathetic face. Then frowned. “We’re all right for time, aren’t we?”

  “We’re fine.” He stifled a yawn. “According to my watch, we’ve been here just over two hours in our world’s time.”

  “Oh, that makes my brain hurt,” Avery said, putting her fingers to her temples. “I’ve been to sleep, I’m still tired, and yet I shouldn’t even have gone to bed yet. This is what sends everyone around the twist. Going into a suitcase one day and coming out three days earlier.”

  “Can that happen?” Flick asked.

  “No, ignore her,” Jonathan said, standing up and straightening his incredibly creased shirt. “Time is only moving in one direction.”

  “That’s what you think.” Avery checked her reflection in the underside of a brass pan. “Uh. I look like I’ve melted.”

  Flick snorted.

  Avery looked at her. “What?”

  “You know you don’t,” Flick said, feeling weirdly irritated. Her face had gone prickly. “Not even slightly.”

  Avery raised her eyebrows. “Right.” She put the pan down. “Well… same.”

  She went quickly up the steps onto the deck, leaving Flick to pick up the pan and give her own reflection an assessment. She decided that Avery was absolutely lying because she had a massive crease down her face from the hammock, for starters. Her mouth tasted like something had died in it.

  Flick followed the rest of the crew up on deck. The sky overhead was as dark as before, but she could see a weird gray-blue filtering through the torn holes in the sky. Somewhere, in some world, it was morning.

  “Sleep well, did you?” Jereme appeared, a steaming kettle in one hand and a stack of small clay cups in the other. He poured out some pale yellowy liquid and indicated to Flick that she should take the top cup.

  “What is it?”

  “Tea.”

  “Tea is supposed to be brown,” Jonathan said, taking the next drink. He sipped it, and his face fell like a piano dropped from the top of a building. “Oh.”

  “That nice, is it?” Flick asked apprehensively.

  “Tell yourself it’s medicine.”

  Flick screwed up her nose and tasted it. It wasn’t exactly awful. It was somewhere between the green tea her mother had tried for a few weeks and mouthwash. It certainly stripped the bad taste from her mouth, though it felt as if it was stripping the top layer of her tongue off as well.

  “Captain wants to see you first thing,” Jereme said. “Get yourselves a breakfast and go as soon as you’re ready.”

  “Good,” Flick said to Jonathan when the first mate had gone. “We need to remind her that we all need that suitcase back.”

  “Maybe she has it?” Avery suggested. “It could have been brought to her during the night, by one of the mer-people.”

  “Seems a bit of a long shot,” Flick said. “But fingers and toes all crossed that you’re right.”

  * * *

  Breakfast turned out to be dried fish and black bread, along with some strange vegetables that looked like purple carrots, but tasted of mushy peas. Jonathan didn’t eat much, and it wasn’t long before he made an excuse and vanished below deck.

  “There’s no such thing as privacy here,” he thundered when he returned, as red as a postbox.

  “Was someone watching you through the keyhole?” Avery asked.

  “There wasn’t a keyhole. There wasn’t a door. Just a—a bucket behind a screen.” He shuddered. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”

  “Maybe Nyfe has found out where the suitcase is,” Flick said hopefully. “Maybe that’s why she wants to see us.”

  They finished breakfast and went over the deck to Nyfe’s cabin. They were let in immediately, and Flick couldn’t help feeling immensely jealous of the three empty eggshells on the captain’s table. Clearly, the captain wasn’t about to settle for black bread and mysterious root vegetables.

  “Close the door behind you,” Nyfe instructed. Her clothes were clean and different from the previous day’s, although the seams were still stretched to bursting along her shoulders. Flick wondered if it was deliberate, to make her look intimidating—her clothes could have been made bigger, surely?

  “Do you have my suitcase?” Jonathan asked.

  “No,” Nyfe said, looking mildly surprised that he’d asked. “I don’t. But I do have information. And for that, you must come this way.”

  She went over to the bed and grabbed the handles of the topmost drawers the mattress lay upon. To Flick’s surprise, the drawers didn’t pull out—they lifted, taking the mattress with them, revealing several steps vanishing downward. “Watch your step,” Nyfe said, swinging a leg over. “The boards are old and thin.” />
  The three of them climbed over and down, Nyfe staying at the top to pull the mattress-board back into place before following them. The passage was narrow and the ceiling low—Jonathan had to keep his hand above his head and Nyfe was bent double, but they quickly came to their destination: a water-level balcony that had been carved at the rear of the ship, beneath the level of Nyfe’s cabin.

  “This is a picaroon pit,” Nyfe said, straightening up. The water washed over her boots, and Flick’s heart sank as her sneakers were soaked for the second time in as many days. “Captains past have used it for secret trades, deals, and dropping off those they would rather not make a public spectacle of.”

  “Dropping off?” Flick asked in alarm.

  Nyfe ignored her. “But today we have a meeting.”

  A gray-green head popped up from the surf, making Flick jump. The head gave a nod. “Captain.”

  Nyfe nodded at the mer-person. They swam over and took hold of the railing on the pit to steady themselves. “What news, Merrow?”

  “We began the search for that object you said had been stolen, Pirate Queen,” Merrow said. “The handled box, with locks. Our spies report that it was indeed taken from a group of humans sailing close to the island of the Break.”

  “That was us,” Flick said.

  “And the object was then taken to the depths,” Merrow finished. “Unfortunately, we do not know what happened to it since. I understand it is of great value to you?”

  “To us all,” Flick said quickly. “We need it if we’re going to get any of you out of here—we’re not any help at all unless we can get back to the travel agency.”

  “I see. Then you should also know that the mer-folk who stole your suitcase are allied with the humans known as the Buccaneers.”

  Avery nudged her foot against Flick’s ankle.

  “The Buccaneers?” Jonathan asked. “Who are they?”

  “Water rats,” Nyfe spat. “An ill wind on the ocean.”

  Jonathan blinked. “I’m sorry?”