Out of the Portal

Catherine and Izzy brought John Henry and lunch up top. My passengers ate and relaxed and played, happy to be out of the portal, underway, and not baking hot any longer. The knot in my stomach only grew. I had cheated. I’d been sentenced. I would pay.

“Elizabeth, you remember how to enter Zheng’s compound? The procedures?” My first mate was playing with her nephew while his mother ate a sandwich. “Her colors are stored with the rest of the flags.”

“We only did it a hundred times, Captain,” she scoffed. “And it wasn’t so long ago that we were there – oh, actually I suppose it was. How long again?” Elizabeth was quick to understand that we would be many years off from our last trip there, even though the last time we were there was barely a month ago.

“Long enough,” I sighed and looked out at the waves. What form would my sentence take? I rubbed the circle of scar tissue around my left shoulder. That megalodon had been terrifying.

“Sorry, Captain. I know you still don’t know.” Elizabeth turned her attention back to the baby.

I got up and spread out the laundry on the boom again. It was still damp. My long linen rolls were strung all around. I had a crock of lanolin by my seat and planned to spend the afternoon working the waxy oil into the wraps. Any amount of comfort would be welcome. I made my way back over to Elizabeth and sat down. Then I got up and coiled some rope. Then sat back down.

“She’s on that large island off the southern coast of China. You remember it? It’s where we lost Tam’s ship.”

“Yes.” She nodded.

“Once there’s more traffic, raise her colors and find your way in – we’ll find our way in,” I amended.

The wind and waves stayed with us the rest of the day into the next and the next and the next. Izzy made me go back on her rigid schedule of eating and sleeping. When we were becalmed in the portal she’d relaxed about letting me stay in the captain’s chair since we weren’t going anywhere, but now that we were inbound to China my sister wasn’t taking any chances with my health and well-being.

I didn’t fight her. The knot in my stomach wouldn’t disappear; it grew with every hour the Try Your Luck spent easing along the waves uncompromised. I even went so far as to request she up the dosage of medicine she insisted on serving me in the fancy chalice she’d found in Greenland.

I was the only one who spent her days uneasy. The rest of the passengers were excited to be in new waters and facing adventure in a foreign land. Elizabeth had fond memories of her time in Zheng’s compound and even though, fundamentally, she knew this coming experience wouldn't be the same, she was nonetheless ready to be back working for my old friend.

Izzy was gleeful about the travel. She’d spent most of her life in the western hemisphere but had always wanted to see more of the world. I couldn’t really tell if Catherine understood how far she was from home. The young mother sat with her baby and let the wind tousle their hair. Geography was a non issue for her, she knew her little family was safe and that was enough for now.

Izzy was at the helm this morning and I sat sipping my medicine just off to the side. It was a straightforward sailing situation but I still twitched and restrained myself from getting up to make adjustments. Izzy made most of the adjustments in time. We were fine.

I couldn’t relax.

John Henry made his way over to me and tugged at my pant leg to get picked up. I scooped the little boy up and sat him on my lap for an unending game of peekaboo. I spent a few minutes going “Where’s the baby? Where’s the baby? There he is!” Comedy gold. I soon had him giggling as I added funny expressions to the game. I picked up the spyglass and entertained him with how it opened up and collapsed down and how you could look through it. His pudgy hands gummed up the lenses quickly.

Catherine came over and sat by me. She usually chose the others for her company as much as possible since Elizabeth and I had returned. Not that Catherine and I had been particularly close before Greenland but we’d been making inroads towards a state that could have been considered friendship.

“Would you have taken me?” she suddenly asked. “If I wasn’t the one with the baby? Could I have gone with you?”

I stopped my peekaboo game with the little boy and looked her over in consideration. The answer was “no” but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings right now. She pursed her lips and watched our wake, seeing the answer in my expression.

She looked back and collected herself. “Do you think you and I would have had adventures and sailed for years? I could be a good first mate if…” she stroked her son’s cheek then quickly looked back away at the water, “Don’t answer that,” she whispered. “Dreams and adventures were never meant for me, I suppose.” She made a gesture around her face that could be wiping a tear away or could be contemplating what was next on her social to do list. My mother had made a million similar gestures over the years.

“You can want John Henry and still want to dream.” I tickled the little boy’s belly. “No, I wouldn’t have taken you,” I told her. She only nodded and kept watching the ocean. “I would have been wrong though. I’m usually wrong about choices involving people.”

“I could be a good first mate,” she told herself.

“I agree.”

I handed her child back to her and returned my empty chalice to the galley. Elizabeth was down below and working on dinner. She offered to wash it for me and I let her. The galley was too small to have two people in it and the cup just needed rinsing. Even after all these years Elizabeth was still enchanted with the faucet. I couldn’t blame her. Every time I went home I twisted the shower dial from cold to hot and back again, over and over. Plumbing was just the best.

I went back on deck and watched the baby put the spyglass to his eye and heard him exclaim, “boat!”

Catherine wiped off the lens and looked through herself, “Yes!” she praised the fat little baby, “That’s a boat! You are a wonderful baby.” The baby clapped his pudgy hands at his mother’s compliments.

I shaded my eyes and looked for the boat. We’d been alone on the water for days, not another ship in sight. How had one come within a one-year-old’s sight without me knowing about it? My stomach twisted and I borrowed the spyglass from the baby to have a look myself.

It was a small ship, probably fifty feet, one main sail, Asian derivation. There was probably a crew of ten to fifteen aboard. The oars were up for the moment but at any time those oars could be put in the water and challenge my engine to a race.

“Huh,” was all my genius brain could come up with.

“What is it?” Izzy asked, daring to drop her hands from the ten and two position for a moment to look at the speck of a ship on the waves behind us.

“That boat wasn’t there before. I don’t like it.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t there before? Boats don’t just appear out of nowhere....do they?”

“No. I must have just missed it,” I lied. Our boat would have come out of nowhere if anyone had been around to see us exit the portal. I was obsessive about watching for other ocean going traffic while on a journey, I wouldn’t have missed it if it had been there the whole time. The knot in my stomach tightened.

A ship had appeared out of nowhere and was set directly on our tail; my punishment had arrived.