Greenland: Turn Back the Pages

A seagull eyed me from the top of my wheel. Where was I? Why was my head so dizzy and thirsty and craving greasy breakfast items that wouldn’t be available for seven hundred years? Why was I trussed to the main mast with at least 30 yards of rope? “Zheng? Elizabeth?”  he sun was hot and bright in my eyes. That seagull kept staring at me. “Hello?” 

“Good morning, Captain!” Elizabeth said in an overly cheerful voice I would make her pay for later. “Ready to go get those folks in Greenland?”

“What? Who?” I was wrapped up like a mummy and couldn’t move. Zheng appeared next to her, clearly suffering as huge a hangover as I was. “Zheng, a little help?”

“I lost the card game to her too.” She rubbed her jaw. “I’m going to miss you…and all that gold you brought me. I love gold.”

“Me too.” I did. I really loved getting rich.

“Say your goodbyes, you two. We are leaving.” Elizabeth began casting off.

“When’s the next time we meet up? Clearly you are a shit ton older than the you that left here to search for Marco.” 

“I don’t know. It’s hot,” I complained. Neither woman was making a move to untie me. “Wait, what time is it?”

“13 – 1330, I think?” Zheng sprawled on the bench next to me.  

I cracked up laughing. “You can go see me now! Right now, Marco and I are at his place up by Andaman. You can go get us and…” I was grinning ear to ear, that had been a great time, “...and I won’t ruin it for you, but take your boat and go. You won’t regret it.” I kept on laughing and Zheng started laughing too. Elizabeth soon kicked Zheng off the ship and raised the sails.  

She untied me when we were about an hour away from the portal. Elizabeth knew the way there by heart these days. I had to hand it to her, she was good. My pattern was to stay with Zheng through the duration of these compounds before parting. Yet here I was, on my way back to Izzy and Greenland before my ship needed repair or I had a hold full of useless treasure I couldn’t move yet. In the case of the later I'd be heading to Greenland to deposit that treasure, not pick up sisters. 

I felt like the insides of a dead seal, probably looked like it too. I staggered to the galley and drank a gallon of water. Whiled there, I picked a few ripe cherry tomatoes and sprouted mung beans out of Elizabeth’s forest for breakfast. I missed sausage egg and cheese biscuits like a burning hole had opened in my soul. I missed ketchup. I really missed gatorade. The mung beans were unchewable cud between my teeth as I yearned for chicken and waffles. Truth be told I went home as often for my stomach as I did to see my mother and sister. 

Breakfast eaten, if not enjoyed, I went up and set the sails to take us into the portal. Once the current caught us, I sat back and tried to manage the hangover symptoms. With all our recent travel within the portal, it wasn’t putting on any particular show for me. It was just another Tuesday. The sky was clear with no particular weather, good or bad. Just another day. 

Elizabeth paced the deck. “How long till we exit?” She aggressively coiled rope and aggravated my dizziness with her movements.

“Sit down. It’ll take as long as it takes. You know that. When did we leave them again?” Even the mild sun was murdering my corneas.

“Not humorous, Captain.” She kept pacing.

“I’m sure I wrote it down somewhere. I know it was somewhere in the 16th century -- no, 1600s. So 17th century. Why did they do that? Needlessly complicated numbering system.” I kept sipping water. She got me drunk on purpose. 

“1649, Captain! Greenland.” 

“Right. Right. Don’t shout.” My head was going to fall off. I course corrected to 1649. “We’ll get there. Sit down. Do we have any rice and chicken down there?” Mung beans were stupid.

Elizabeth put her pacing to good use and messed about in the galley, banging around until she came back up with a bowl of the stuff and a cup of something else. “What’s this?”

“Your medicine. Izzy – Isabelle will want to know when the last time you took it was. I don’t want to lie.” 

“Well, I don’t want to take it.” I put the cup to the side.

“It’ll help the hangover.”

I took it. The drugs countered the alcohol and I course corrected even further to the precise date and time. I’d told Izzy we’d be there for dinner. My best estimate was we had another a day or two in the portal before exiting. I was tired and not in a hurry and not being particularly observant. That sort of inefficiency usually extended the time I spent navigating this current. 

Elizabeth continued to fret and pace and obsessively clean till I threatened to banish her to sit in the row boat or pump out the bilge.

“Captain, what do you tell your sister after you’ve been away a long time like this?"

“We really haven’t been gone that long and they are not going to know how long we were away. It will only have been a day to them. Not even a full day. You can decide whether or not you want to say anything. Is that the reason for all the pacing?”

“What if she asks questions?”

“She never has before. It’ll be fine.” I waved off her concern. I went out on my ship. I came back. Izzy stuffed me full of vegetables and talk about her latest employment or charity concern or current event that was crawling up her butt. If she ever asked me questions they were easily answered with boring ship trivia: 

Izzy: Where did you go today? 

Anne: (back from fifteen years moving pepper with Zheng) Oh, just out for a quick sail before the school week starts.

Izzy: How was the water out there? You must have had a nice weekend, did you?

Anne: (back from spending a season with Graham where we hardly left our bedroom) It was so great. Just so so great. Just…really great.

Izzy: Oh my god! What happened to the ship? Why are you limping?

Anne: (back from latest skirmish with the VOC) Storms. I need a nap.

Izzy: We have that event at Daydream in half an hour. Mom put your outfit out on your bed.

Anne: Wonderful. I’ll sleep there.

Izzy: No! Those kids have been working hard. You can’t snore through it. Anne! Get back here!

“I’ll answer whatever questions she asks, just like I always do.”  To varying degrees of informative. Elizabeth finally alighted on the starboard bench. We both started in on the chicken and rice bowls she brought up. She’d indulged by sprinkling some salt over the meager meal. Not that I was complaining but we usually saved that stuff to sell. She must be nervous if she was indulging herself. “They knew this trip would take a little while. There’s no cause for concern,” I tried to reassure her. 

Food helped counteract the hangover better than the drugs. We were bang on course with plenty of time left in the portal. Elizabeth cleared the dishes and I pulled out the voluminous rose pink skirt. There wasn’t much left to do on it. I examined the final tendril of ivy. I’d taken this one down to the hem. Maybe I should call it on this dress and start another. I was almost out of yellow anyway. There was some deep blue linen in the hold I could start on. I shook out the pink skirt to get a better look on it as a whole and agreed that it was complete enough for now. I took it below to the spare cabin, Izzy’s cabin, that we’d been using for storage. It had the overflow of Elizabeth’s forest, crates of personal items, gifts my first mate had bought for her family, and the rose pink bodice hanging up behind the door. I added the skirt to the hanger and smoothed out the folds. It would look nice once it had petticoats and other foundation garments to display my work.

Elizabeth sat at the galley table with her well worn book. 

“Did that baron’s daughter marry that duke again? Happens every time.” And every time Elizabeth reread it she got mad and spent the day telling me how the character made such a mistake choosing status and money over the chance to have happiness in a small cottage by the seaside. If only she’d have followed her heart and not been bullied to protect her future security. I laughed but my first mate kept staring at the page. I looked over to see what part she was at and saw my old doodle of three stick figures at the top. Elizabeth traced the faded ink.

“A few journeys ago, after Carthage, Zhao welcomed me back to the compound and told me how wonderfully I was growing up. That I looked like a beautiful young woman now, not the girl he was charged to guard when we arrived years ago.” She kept staring at the doodle. I couldn’t remember this Zhao. “I think they are going to know we were gone longer than a few weeks.” Her words came out in a whisper. “She’s going to be upset.” 

I took the book and closed it. “I didn’t give you a choice, understand? I refused to come back. Plain and simple. If it even comes up at all, let them be upset with me.” I smoothed her hair back. I thought she looked fantastic. 

“I did have the choice.” She looked up, angry now that her stick figures weren’t in front of her eyes, judging her. “I chose this. No one chose it for me. Not you, not anyone! Me!” She slammed her hands on the table and pushed away from me and went on deck. I let her have a few moments to herself before following her up and resuming my position in my captain’s chair. 

“It’s okay to be happy with the life you’ve chosen. Going back does not mean you have to hammer yourself into shape to fit her expectations of you. You’ve grown. She’ll understand.”

“Will Izzy – Isabelle?” Elizabeth came and sat down by me. She picked at a spot on the bench cushion, still worried over nothing.

“She’ll be thrilled with you. Izzy should be the least of your worries.”

“No. I mean, look at you. Are you going back to who you were before we left Greenland? You hammer yourself to fit for her. You almost killed yourself to fit. Why should it be different for me?”

“Because it should be. You deserve to be every inch of who you’ve become and fuck anyone who says otherwise.” Now it was my turn to be angry. I deserved the bed I’d made, I knew it. “I’ve made my choices and I’m living with them. Don’t you dare follow in my footsteps. You understand?” Elizabeth didn’t back down from me. She held my glare until I was the one who blinked and looked away. Where was this damn exit? We still had a ways to go.

“I want to go back…but I don’t want to go back to…I miss my family but I don’t…” she trailed off. That was the issue. Not going back to Catherine, but going back to Bessie. Going back to who she thought she had to be, was a good deal worse than a privileged Catholic school girl with a ship.

“You are not Bessie. You are Elizabeth. And Elizabeth is a woman who has punched the Bitch Captain of the Seven Seas in the face and lived. You can tell Catherine that you are no longer Bessie.”

I think she understood. She went below to brew the coffee. I set my watch for twenty minutes. Might as well get a jump on my sleep while I could even though I wasn’t particularly tired. I closed my eyes anyway.

We mostly kept to ourselves throughout the rest of the day and night; both of us lost in our thoughts and fears. I didn’t like that she’d called me out about how different I acted with my sister. She was right of course. I’d never intended for Izzy to learn who I really was. I’d only wanted her to know I lived my life in a different manner but was still fulfilled and successful. She was never supposed to know how cracked and raw I was on the inside. That was for me alone to handle. She should never have seen me dance with Graham. She should never have seen me kill. 

Which was the real me? The no ambition disappointment who ran away from home or the vicious captain sitting on a mountain of gold and pain? Was I either? Was I neither? 

[Is there only one way?]

As the stars revealed themselves in the portal and I was left under cloak of darkness, I suspected there might be more to myself. I hoped that there might be, that I wouldn’t always need to hammer away at my sharp edges to fit into this world.

Elizabeth was sleeping below when I made our exit. The portal had kept the night sky quiet and deep and we exited into a subtly lighting morning. Not sunrise just yet, but close. I went down and shook her. “Hey, we’re out. I need that canister back.”

“What?”

“You hid the canister, remember?”

“No.” She turned over and shoved me away. 

“I told you to hide it after you wrote your name on it. Remember?”

“Get the fuck out of here. I’m sleeping.” She was grouchy when woken unexpectedly, especially by me. It was useless. I went above and heaved to. We had a few hours till Past Anne and Bessie came looking for that canister. I pulled out my notebook and flipped to a free page. What did I write? What did past me need to know? I shrugged and scratched out some helpful tips past me was sure to ignore, that arrogant bitch. 

The young lieutenant is in Avington Estate, England. 

Oct 13th 1650. Full dress. Bring your guns. 

Wounded badly. 

You will need Fountain. 

Don’t play cards with Elizabeth.   

I should underline that last one. My jaw still hurt where she’d decked me. The Avington date I’d pulled from a few notes I’d left earlier in this notebook. Maybe Elizabeth was right, that little stint in England certainly felt long long ago.

Last I saw you, you were in my bed, under my sheets. Marco’s voice and kiss seeped into my memory. Go back to Greenland. Do what you need to do. Then come find me. I shivered. Find Marco? I wasn’t sure about that. He and I had a long and treacherous history. That kiss though…

Elizabeth came up the stairs and tossed me the canister she’d hidden at the start of this journey. She scooted me out of the captain’s chair too. We were out. It was her shift. I put the note into the canister and chucked the whole canister/buoy contraption overboard. I stayed awake until I directed her to an empty cove on the eastern coast of the island where we could wait till our past selves were safe in the portal.

Once we anchored I brought up a bottle and two glasses. She replaced my glass with a cup of medicine. I didn’t fight her on it. I raised my cup. “Fair winds and following seas.  Welcome back.” We drank. When the medicine hit my system I took myself to bed before I collapsed.

I dropped into bed and took off the bracelet I’d worn for however long we’d been away and placed it on the side table next to me. I’d done the deed. I’d written the note. I’d come back. Mission accomplished.