Lots of Days After That

The portal and I sat in a blinking contest, two fat old turtles staring at each other, refusing to budge. I pulled out some embroidery and attempted to start a leaf design in a green on blue ensemble but it was so hot my brain couldn’t reach my fingertips. I put it back in the box and adjusted my hat.

The sun beat down harder. I didn’t even think that was possible. I groaned and fanned myself with my hat. Off the edge of the ship deep dark shapes passed ominously under us. We couldn’t stay in this stalemate forever. Soon the portal would up the ante. I wasn’t going to budge. I wanted my exit the way I wanted it and one way or another the portal was going to accommodate me.

It had been two weeks. Two excruciating weeks. Know how I knew this? Because Izzy came up and told me every 12 fucking hours what time it was and just how terrible our circumstances were. I was ready to drop kick her. The portal had chosen its torture well. It was just possibly the worst thing it could have devised. Elizabeth was bored. Catherine couldn’t wear twenty layers. John Henry was confined to a tiny space. Izzy couldn’t cook. And me? I could withstand the heat and stillness. No, it was sadistic what it did to me. It caused all these passengers to come up and complain to me every blessed moment.

“Why won’t the sun move? My phone says it’s midnight but the sun is still in the same place! It never moves. Never!”

“I can’t possibly take off more layers. I can’t. Indecency…please is there something you can do?”

“The ink smudged on my favorite page! Captain, give in. You must. There’s nothing left to clean or do or play.”

“I can’t turn the oven on! I hate coldcut sandwiches! I hate them! Where’s the bread? We don’t even have any bread!”

“The tablets run out of battery and he screams. Can’t we swim or anything, Captain?”

“My favorite scene! It’s smudged now! Andrea and Emilia realize they are in love and Andrea invites Emilia to her bed and now the part where she lifts Andrea’s skirt up high is smudged! Smudged!”

The sun never moved but I could tell the time by the complaints of these shrill lives that came on deck only to have their maladies and complaints drilled into my skull over and over and over again.

“Anne. I- I can’t. We can’t do this anymore. Please.” Izzy arrived right on cue. I swear my favorite person on the ship right now was the damn goat.

“You are completely over reacting!” I yelled. Maybe it was to my sister. Maybe it was to the portal. I didn’t care. They were one and the same unyielding, petty, tantrum throwing forces of nature at this point. “We are so close. So close it’s ridiculous. This is ridiculous. We are going to England.” So you couldn’t bake a loaf of bread. So you gave up one tiny trip to London. Did we have to make such a production out of everything? “We are going to England if we have to continue to sit here for six months! Make it hotter! I dare you!”

The portal got hotter. From behind its shade the goat let out a pathetic mew.

“No! Look, I know you tried, Anne!” Izzy turned and with a deep lungful of air, rage screamed into the distance a mere few inches from my ear. Torture. I should push her overboard and see how she fared with the megalodons. 

“But apparently, the portal needs to let me know that it doesn’t approve of my marriage!” she screamed just as loud into the water. My boot on her ass and over she’d go. “We just have to get out of here. We- can we get out of here? Or are we in some endless inescapable nightmare?

“This has nothing to do with you. I swear.” Sort of. If Izzy wasn’t here there was a zero percent chance I’d be attempting this journey. “But if we give up…” If I gave in and chose a different course then how would I ever get her home? She had to get home. I’d promised her. I’d made a vow. She was going home. “We can’t give up. I won’t give up. It’s just…hot.” So fucking hot and everyone was complaining and monsters circled under us in the deep. Yes, it was hot but there were no storms. I was keeping a weather eye out for signs of a storm. If I got even an inkling of the pressure dropping or heard a rumble of thunder we were out of here. I would take us back to Rome without a second thought. The storms had held off so far so there must not be anyone aboard it wanted.

“No, Anne. It was hot that summer that the AC kept breaking and the pool filters were on backorder. This is in-fucking-fernal. What are our options other than continuing this unwinnable fight?”

The decades drifted past my hull like an oil slick in dead water. There were exits. I saw them within reach. Heron’s Landing was close. California in the 1920s. Rome in the 1400s. There were several North Sea options. Bermuda was there too. Always there. Waiting for me.

“I don’t want any other options. I want this.” This was the way it happened. This was the way Izzy would get her happily ever after after being dragged down through this miserable rabbit hole of a vacation. A little heartbreak, a little therapy, and she’d be back in her happy life and moving on as she was always meant to.

“I want to not perish in a fold of space-time hitherto unknown to humankind and science.” Izzy looked like she needed a fainting couch. I watched for the Southern Belle in her to make its appearance. “What is your deal with winning, anyway?”

“You want to go to England. We are going to England.” Easy. Even the goat could answer that one by now.

“No. Right now, we are slowly cooking to death in a supernatural oven. Anne, please - get us out of here. You must have some wiles you can exert, right?”

“Wiles.” My traitorous eyes flicked to the cabinet below the wheel. There were rules. There were violations. There would be consequences. “Maybe. Yes.”

Off in the distance heat lightning flared among teasing clouds that never reached us.

There were rules I’d never violated before. My eyes flicked to the cabinet again. Thunder thrummed through my bones, warning me against the thoughts forming in my mind.

“Yes? Did you say yes? I want to make sure I’m not hallucinating.”

“I said yes. But it’s a tricky choice.” I searched the water around us. If I could hold onto 1649…maybe I could still win. I just needed to beat October 1650 to the exit. We’d need to sail plain water there but it could be doable.

“Tricky how, exactly?” Izzy was excited now thinking that her husband was within reach.

In the cabinet below the wheel was the start button and throttle for the solar powered engine. With all the blazing sun lately, the charge was full. I rubbed my forehead, knowing that there would be consequences for this. Engines were sacreligious within the portal. I couldn’t explain it beyond the man made vibrations stirred up trouble, wakes, and interfered with the transfer of information. It was exerting your will over the will of a more powerful element and that element was high strung and moody. It was not out of the question that dinosaurs would rise from the deep and break the ship in half in retaliation. I rubbed the ring of scar tissue on my shoulder and remembered the dark shapes circling deep below us even now.

It was there. Just beneath a thin cabinet door was the engine start button. We’d be moving for the first time since Greenland. 1649 wasn’t far off. I could chase it down.

Thunder thrummed through me again. What did I choose here? What was the lesser evil? I knew what would happen if I didn’t press that button. I would break and opt for an exit condoned by the portal. Who knows what would happen to Izzy then? Who knows if she’d ever get home? To me, that was the greater evil. The evil I knew was bearing the cost of the portal’s anger. It would be a terrible price to pay. I would pay it.

“I could get us out but I don’t know where we’ll end up. I can try…but I don’t know.” If I couldn’t hold my line, we could truly end up anywhere and any time.

“Meaning, we’re probably not going to England. Or at least, not the right England?” Izzy looked into the water, maybe hoping that if I couldn’t give her the answers the portal could. But the portal had already been screaming its answer out. She’d heard it. We all had. “But we can try again later, right?”

“I don’t know. When the portal is like this…” There were costs. There were consequences. I was shut out of much of the 18th century. Zheng was curtailed to the crusades. Maui was lost forever. What would happen if I hit that button? Would England be wiped off the map for me? Suppose I was only able to sail there on plain water?

“I don’t…know. I really don’t know. I’m sorry. But I just don’t know.” If I didn’t hit that button, Izzy might never get home. That was unacceptable. That was the greater evil.

“I understand. I know you tried, Anne. It really means everything that you did.” Izzy leaned against the rail in defeat.

“You sure you want to do this? We can keep fighting. Another week, another month…we might win.” If they could all just make it a little longer, perhaps there was a chance to come out on top here.

“I don’t think I have another week of this in me, Anne.” She shook her head and took a moment to arrange her thoughts. “And- even if I did, I wouldn’t ask the rest of you to keep suffering.”

I wish I was as certain as she was that the suffering would end when we exited the portal. It would be my choice, my finger pressing the engine start, my price to pay.

“Okay. Get the life jackets on everyone. Strap that baby down.” Already the currents were shifting beneath the hull as I began to take action.

“Aye aye, Captain. Let’s blow this popsicle stand. And once we do, I’ll make popsicles.” She was talking but my eyes were on the sky. The clouds were shifting. Already there was the tang of humidity in the air. The barometer was dropping.

“Send Elizabeth up,” I ordered. A minute later my first mate was on deck and prepared for action. After all the stagnancy, she was ready for a challenge she could sink her teeth into.

“There is every chance we’ll be fine but let’s prepare for the worst.” I told her. My passengers’ worst scenario was likely images of drowning in the big open ocean; my worst scenario was a storm sweeping these innocents away to the temple. I went to the aft container and grabbed a harness for myself and Elizabeth. The goat I led to the upside down rowboat, released the painter line, and stowed the animal beneath it for safety. Elizabeth strapped her harness on and went to the mainsail sheet, ready to raise or lower it the moment I gave her the order.

The engine sat hidden beneath the water level. I’d built a false wall to hide the machinery should any curious thieves or port authorities come to inspect the hold. It rarely got used back in these times. Only when I went modern day did I use it regularly to get in and out of ports and to the dock at home. Every month I ran checks on it and cleaned and maintained it. During our little side trip Elizabeth sat and watched me perform the maintenance as she read chapters of her book out loud. Corrosive salt could always have damaged it since my last check but I was confident it would turn over.

“Elizabeth!” I called my first mate over. “Keep your eyes open and let me know the second you spot any worrisome weather, cloud formations, riptides, anything.” She agreed and went back to her position. I followed my first mate and took my seat in the captain’s chair.

My finger flexed over the button. The portal and I disagreed at times, we fought over exits, we got mad and retaliated, but in our long career as interdimensional entity and captain, I’d never blatantly disobeyed. There was still time to change my mind. I didn’t have to do this. I searched the horizon for my exit route. It was there: 1649. If I could chase it down, if I could catch it, we still had a chance. Maybe I wouldn’t make it in time for us to reach the young lieutenant as he disembarked, but what was a week or two in the long run? I jammed my finger onto the button. The greater evil was not making this choice and riding out the rest of her story. I opened the throttle.

After years back in time, away from modern life and its constant noises and beeps and machinery, the engine was deafening. Elizabeth jumped and grabbed her ears.

“Steady!” I called out to my first mate and she replaced her hands on the sheet. I closed my eyes and held onto my exit. 1649. I just needed 1649. The propeller began eating up the space and time. 1649. I kept the exit firm in my mind and chased it down.

I felt rather than saw the portal’s response behind my closed lids; the heat broke. I opened my eyes to a solid wall of fog rolling our way. “Shit.”

“Fog, Captain!” Elizabeth yelled. No shit. I kept my course fixed in my mind and we were soon enveloped. The last thing I saw before the fog overtook us and grayed out the world, was her terrified but trusting eyes.

“Just hold on to that line!” I called to her through the fog.

The fog was oppressive and I struggled to breathe in enough air through the water droplets. At long last the ocean began to move beneath us, yet what started out as simple relief of movement after so much stillness, turned to alarm at the firm grip the tides began to exert on my ship. I white knuckled the wheel as I held onto my exit date. 

1649.

We were going to make it. We were almost out. I rode the line leading to 1649. Then I felt it all change.

“No!” I screamed. “Dammit! No!” Beneath the rudder the tides changed. Currents from the North Sea vied with the Pacific and were chased away by the Indian Ocean. The Red Sea made its claim known as well and beat the Arctic back. The Philippine came in with an uppercut that rocked the ship and dropped it down into the clutches of the Atlantic. The Pacific employed a massive undertow and pulled us back. All these waters ripped at the rudder as I struggled to stay on course for 1649.

“No!” I screamed. Elizabeth called back to me but I needed all my focus to remain on course. The currents came to make their claim as well. The Gulf stream fought for dominance against the Humboldt, then they both turned their ire on the Mozambique. All of them lost to the Equatorial Counter who then had to bend to the Antarctic Circumpolar. The winds would have their say too. An enormous trade wind blew up out of nowhere as the current swirled down into a vortex of unnavigable chaos and dragged my sails off course.

“I will have this exit! I will have this ending!” I shouted into the fog and wind. I could see nothing, not my sails, not my first mate, and not my exit. “Shit.”

Out of nowhere a rogue riptide gripped the rudder and tore the wheel from my grasp. Without my consent or knowledge, we were ejected forcefully out of the portal. The bounds of the portal current spun away from me and we were left drifting in the same wall of fog that had cloaked us since I started the engine. I killed the engine.

The fog remained.

The weather inside the portal and the weather outside the portal was seldom identical. Inside the portal might be rain and outside would be a clear night. Or inside the portal would be hot blasting sun and when I exited it would be chill North Sea mist. The matching fog put me on edge. This was trouble. I couldn’t see where I was going and didn’t know who or what might be within earshot.

“Are we out, Captain?” Elizabeth’s disembodied voice asked. Although mere feet from me, the girl was completely obscured from view.

“We’re out,” I confirmed. My heart was beating so hard it hurt.

“I don’t like this fog.” Her voice shook only a little.

“Me either. Stay where you are and be patient. We will wait it out.”

Slowly slowly the fog lightened. Eventually I could see Elizabeth’s outline and she relaxed as she saw me. The sun was low in the sky when the fog finally relented and the rest of my passengers arrived on deck, flushed and excited with the change of scenery even though there was little to see that was different than our view from the portal. The endless leagues of ocean stretched out here the same as they had there only now it was getting dark.

They would all start asking the question in a matter of seconds. That question. The question. They wouldn’t be able to help themselves. I could barely help myself. This ocean of gray swells and matching sky held no answers. Izzy picked up my spyglass and started looking for those answers. I prayed that for once she’d have them and it wouldn’t be on my shoulders to know it all, do it all, and carry the full weight of flawlessly navigating these souls to their happy endings.

“So...where are we?” Izzy asked. There it was.

I looked around but knew it was useless. There was nothing to see. Nothing. The portal had rocked us badly enough on our exit that I didn’t know a location or a year or even if I’d be allowed back to the portal one day. In using the engine to get us out, I’d committed an unforgivable sin. I’d lost. I would be punished.

“I don’t know,” I answered her. I’d be punished severely and I didn’t know how.

“What about when? Any idea of that?” Izzy tried the next obvious question.

“No.” I wanted my portal back. What had I done? Why had I done that? I shouldn’t have done that. I wanted to reach out to the portal and apologize and take it all back but I was terrified of what its answer would be. What I’d done was unforgivable. I was unforgivable.

“Crap,” Izzy mumbled. I nodded along with her sentiment.

“How can we know?” Catherine asked. Her question gave me space to start breathing. ‘How’, instead of ‘where’. ‘We’ instead of ‘you’.

“We have to wait. Hopefully I’ll be able to recognize constellations in the sky tonight.” If this fog lifted enough to even see the night sky. If we were even in a time and place with familiar constellations. If I even knew anything at all. 

Didn’t feel like I did at the moment.

“And the when?” My first mate took her turn asking a question.

I sighed. If I could see the stars, if I could discern constellations, if I could triangulate our position, we stood a chance of solving the “where” of where we were. The when? The stars did not contain that information. “We’ll need to find land. Then ask someone.”

“What?!” Izzy exclaimed. To someone who’d never had to pull over at a gas station for directions I could see how my answer would sound absurd. “You- there’s no way that’s what you usually do. “Tally-ho friend, I say, I’m a time traveler, could you be so good as to tell me the year”?!”

We were lost. I’d been lost before but never this badly. I’d had to find land before to learn what era it was. Churches usually kept track of years. Peasants didn’t bother with it too much. Time was seasons and harvests and feast days and marriages. There was the year the boy died of consumption. There was the war that took out the crops. When Jane was young she was a pretty thing and now she is old with moles and her husband is unhappy. Now it is winter. Now it is spring. Now we celebrate. Now we mourn.

I was lost.

“There is one thing we can try.” I opened up the cabinet again and began running through the various communication systems I had installed onboard. I worked the SatNav all the way down to sending a message out via Morse Code. No responses. The odds that in all of time and space we’d managed to land within a 150 year span where global communication was possible, was a slim one. “We are not anywhere post 1900,” I explained as I shut it all back down and put it away.

Izzy looked at me, stricken. Elizabeth looked at me for orders. Catherine looked at me with grave concern for both her life and her son’s. In trying to eke out a win, I’d lost us everything. I’d lost us.

Catherine and Izzy retreated back below decks to air out the ship and begin dinner. I looked out at the waves, lost.

“Captain?” Elizabeth called for my attention, “suppose we heave to. Nowhere to go till there’s somewhere to go, right?”

“Right.”

“Could be a good time to rest, right?”

“Right.”

“I won’t sink the ship.”

“I know.”

I was about to head down to my cabin when I remembered the goat. I turned and headed aft. I released the painter enough to allow enough room to lift the rowboat and look underneath. Smelled like poop under there. Goaty looked back at me with accusatory eyes. I’d gotten it lost too.

“I’m sorry,” I told it. “I did everything wrong.”

It bleated and head butted me. I moved aside so it could leave the small confines of the upside down rowboat. It clopped away. Yeah, I didn’t want to be around me either.

Catherine and Izzy were talking in the galley and didn’t look up as I came through and went to my cabin. I shut the door and switched on the sconce lamp by my bed. It was quiet in here. I was an inmate awaiting sentencing.

While I waited I decided to take a quick shower and change. After so much heat and stress, the cool water and soap was welcome. I had some oil in a jar to dress my scars. It was greasy and I opted just to wear leggings instead of fully wrapping myself up. We were still at sea (for now) and these would work. I threw on a sweater, socks, and my boots. I brushed out my hair and braided it back in one long french braid. Nothing fancy today.

I sat against my bed, heartbroken. I’d never been so awful to my portal. Never. Sure, we’d had fights but we’d always been there for each other. Today, I’d deliberately gone against it even though I knew better. I hated myself for it. It hated me for it too. I’d broken something today and didn’t even know if repair was possible. I hoped I’d be able to withstand the price.

I rubbed my eyes and decided to go up and wait for the stars to come out. Elizabeth stayed at the wheel with her book and let me be. Chores were the only thing I could think of to do. I coiled rope. I performed minor repairs and cleaning. I milked the goat and brought the container of fresh milk down to the galley for Izzy to do what she wanted with it later. I washed clothes and hung them up to dry on the boom. I shoveled the old and dirty goat hay off into the water and put down a fresh layer. When John Henry toddled over, I put him in a fresh diaper. Izzy brought up dinner and Elizabeth relinquished the wheel to me and John Henry. He sat on my lap and steered as I handed him small bites of bread and chunks of stewed potato.

Everyone was waiting for the stars. They watched me as I watched the sky. Every twitch I made caused them to look over with hope in their eyes that I would have divined news for them out of unknowable nature. Izzy had fallen into a bad habit of calling me a demigod and the others had followed suit. Our little shore excursion to the village in Greenland had not helped matters. Nor had side quest to learn the young lieutenant’s future lessened my mythological leanings in their eyes. Likely going toe to toe with the portal had done its damage too, cementing this idea that I had power I could wield and save them all. I did not. I was good at two things: sailing and killing. I hoped we reached land before the latter skill proved out. The foggy and gray ocean all around us sure looked like a gloomy graveyard at the moment.

Catherine and Izzy were continuing a conversation from earlier. They were going around in circles. Elizabeth twitched to turn on a light to read better but kept pulling her hand back, not wanting the artificial light to interfere with my ability to read the stars.

All conversation petered out as the first stars became visible in the sky. They looked up at the sky and then over at me. Up and over. Up and over. I hated this. I was lost. There was no point trying to look up at anything. Even if I could figure out where we were, what good would it do? I’d cheated on the thing I cared about most in life and done it with spite in my heart. I’d done it on purpose for my own selfish reasons. I deserved to lose. I deserved to be lost.

I stared down at my dinner, refusing to look up till John Henry grabbed my cheek with his claws and pointed to a jellyfish in the water. He was reminding me of our game. I gave him the name in English, then again in several more languages. Hurrian didn’t have a word for jellyfish that I knew of so I made one up that translated to stinging blob of goo. He giggled. I may deserve to be lost but he didn’t. Neither did the rest of them.

I looked skyward and John Henry copied my movements. We watched the stars together. It took a minute to orient myself. There was partial cloud cover still but enough were visible. I wanted to give up. I wanted to cry. If John Henry wasn’t on my lap and my three other passengers (and that fucking goat) weren’t staring at me, I would have dropped the sails, gone below and let the tide carry me away. I didn’t deserve to be found.

“There.” I spotted the seven closely grouped stars. “Pleiades.” Then over a little was, “Orion.” Always easy to spot. And then, “Aries…No…” I assessed the groupings. I was using the western names. We weren’t west. “Lepu. Sipat,” I pointed up. John Henry pointed with me. “Tudong. Soag.” As I said the names of the stars and constellations with their correct names for this location, the world reoriented and I had a general placement for our location. “Okay everyone, we are somewhere in the Philippine Sea.” They cheered. I didn’t. I would have to watch the stars all night before knowing exactly where in the 5 million square kilometers of Philippine Seas we might have ended up. 

Knowing where we were was only practical information if you had a destination.

“Well, this is certainly an improvement. Any idea of the when, yet?” Izzy asked.

I just shook my head. “No.” The north star was where it should be and that was the only indication that we weren’t a millenia away from where we started.

“Zheng? Can you trace her?” Elizabeth asked. She knew the Philippine Sea. We’d traveled it for years together. Zheng had operated in and out all of the islands and countries around here. She knew I often focused on Zheng while we were in the portal to orient us out when the portal got rough. Even my family didn’t know I possessed that particular association with the portal.

“I don’t know.” I shook my head again. We could be anywhere. She could be anywhere. Why even go to her? So we could be stuck together? Two portal outcasts living through terrible years and selling pepper till our pores reeked of it and we were slaughtered by rivals? I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back to the portal and apologize and buy a houseboat and live in there forever, just the two of us. But I’d ruined it just as thoroughly as I’d ruined my life in Bermuda.

“Focus, Captain,” Elizabeth tried to call me back.

“We are in plain water, not the portal.” There was nothing to track here. In the portal I could find my friends. Even if I could somehow try to track their lives on plain water it would be through the fringes of the portal’s power and there’s no way the portal would allow that now. I’d really fucked up.

“Try,” Elizabeth tried again.

“She’s confined to the crusades.” Zheng couldn’t travel like I could. She was confined to two hundred years where she could sail herself. If she was outside of those years she was there because she lived through them linearly or because she’d begged me for a ride.

“Then if we are in those years we can get to her,” Elizabeth pointed out. And so what? So I could bring these people to a terrible era and let them suffer plagues and tyrants, pirates and zealots? No.

I shook my head. It wouldn’t work. All this magic they think I possessed was a lie. It all came from the portal. I owned none of it. I was good at two things and two things only.

“Try. You can do this.” If Elizabeth said one more damn word I was docking her pay and demoting her to swabbing decks.

“That’s not how it works,” I glared at her. “I can’t do everything. I am not a demigod.” I glared at Izzy. “Just stop.” I got up and went to the far rail. This ship wasn’t big enough for all the space I wished to put between myself and these people right now.

I was not a demigod or a goddess or anything. I couldn’t just do things. Did I have to prove that to them in yet another catastrophic way today? How many times did I have to fall flat on my face before they’d believe I was just as human and flawed as they were allowed to be?

Catherine’s hand on my shoulder startled me. The look in her eye startled me more. She didn’t look at me like I’d failed her. “It’s okay if you can’t. No one will be upset.” She rubbed my shoulder a little.

“Just try, Anne? Please?” Izzy said from behind me. I turned around to see them all watching me, expecting a miracle.

Instead I kicked the bathing platform down and pulled off my sweater. “Come on John Henry, let’s go put our feet in the water. Take a little break.” I picked up the toddler and took him down for a little nighttime splashing.

The water was cold but we sat on the platform and put our feet in. He splashed me then squealed in delight as the motion activated glowing blooms of plankton where our feet kicked out. We lay down on our bellies and splashed with our hands, stirring the microscopic creatures up into a bright froth. His smiles turned to yawns and he crawled up onto my lap and put his head down. It had been a long day. I held onto him and let my feet drift along in the water under the platform. I watched the stars as they moved slowly above.

Then a gift I hadn’t expected appeared. A bale of sea turtles, splashing their way near my ship and leaving glowing trails behind them, approached. A big one came close enough to eye me curiously before continuing on. Too bad John Henry was asleep, he’d love this. I watched the big turtle stroke away with the rest of his family and friends, that trail showing where he’d been and where he was going.

I’d like to go with him. Stretch out into the wide ocean, eating stinging blobs of goo, following the currents as they flowed around their fins. I wondered where they were heading tonight. Did they have far to travel? I stretched my mind out along their course and followed their current.

The turtles carried me along with them till I was part of the wake they cut through the nighttime water. The current carried me along with the bale. We were going far. It would be a two week journey before we got there. The destination was a familiar one, a large island off the southern coast of China. Elizabeth and I had done business there. A fellow captain who was sailing with us, Tam, had foundered and lost his ship on that island. Elizabeth had talked me into letting him be towed along in our rowboat back to Sunda instead of leaving him there on that island. 

That had been a funny little trip.

Zheng was on that island now. Her large compound, well established and thriving, was situated in an easily defensible bay. Zheng waited for me there. She was older than the last time I was with her. The island was older too. Centuries of time had passed for that island since I’d towed Tam away from it on my rowboat. Zheng herself had skipped around a little, hidden, gone to the temple, returned, started a few new compounds. She wondered when 

I’d come visit. She missed me.

A soft little baby snore reeled me back from her compound, away from Zheng, over the turtles and their glowing trails, through the current that was upset with me but still loved me as much as I loved it, and back onto the bathing platform where a small boy was asleep on his captain’s chest, her feet dangling in the water, and the stars strewn above them in Philippine Sea where they floated almost directly above the Mariana Trench.

I climbed back on deck. I didn’t know how long I’d been down there but it was long enough for Izzy to bring up a meal. They all sat around the small unlit firepit. I traded Izzy John Henry for a plate of bread and goat cheese.

“Zheng’s here,” I told them. “A large island off China’s southern border. I can’t tell when exactly we are. A few hundred years on from our last visit with her at least.” Again, they looked at me as if I really were a demigod…and I was struggling myself to remember that I wasn’t. I looked down at my plate. What the hell was I? Whatever it was, I hated it. “Elizabeth set our course east. I’m going to bed.”

When I got to my cabin I put the plate down on my bedside table without eating it. I just wanted to go to sleep. Did demigod’s sleep? Maui had asked me once if we were gods. No, I’d answered him with authority. No. When I traveled alone it was easy just to be who I was and not question it. Without all these eyes watching me I could just be who I was. Their stares demanded a label. I didn’t like it.

I changed for bed and tried to block out the voices still talking above me.

****

I floated alone in the small ship my father had gifted to me, an 18ft sloop christened the Cygnet. My hand was on the tiller as I navigated through the portal. The waters were calm now but just ahead were rough seas. There was a beautiful portal sunrise just cresting the horizon…yet in front of that was a thick line of storms. The storms encircled my small ship, rumbling with thunder and crackling with lightning. Nothing doing, I was going to have to sail through them to get to that sunrise.

A bolt of lightning arced towards me, eager to hit.

****

I woke with a start, my heart racing. The message was clear: I was not exiled but I’d been sentenced.