“My path was taken from me years ago.”
Lao Jia was scandalized when I asked for a knife to set to my hair. “No, no, beauty!” he shouted. “Not to ruin good knife, either!”
I despaired of explaining the problem that had required such a solution. Still, I tried. Somehow he understood. “I cut,” he said. “I keep.”
While I’d held some notion of burning the hair or casting it into the sea, I agreed. He would do a better job than I-when had I ever cut hair? Besides that, I could hardly see my own neck.
We decided to stay in the galley for the effort. There was no purpose in setting a show for the sailors and passengers on deck, and they would be less likely to see me as a girl if they had not witnessed my transformation. Lao Jia produced a great pair of shears. “For cutting,” he said, then a word I did not know.
I just nodded.
He sharpened them on a tiny grinder, which he turned by hand. Unlike Fortune’s Flight with its great kettle belowdecks, Southern Escape had been built for nothing but wind, wood, and muscle power. No electricks here.
In time, Lao Jia sat me on a little folding stool he kept braced behind a counter and went to work. Each snip of the shears was a heavy pull at my scalp that almost made me cry out. I held still, mouth shut and eyes half-clenched against the drizzle of tears he drew forth from me.
Cutting my hair was in a strange way even more painful than slashing my cheeks had been. I tried to think about why that was so. In principle, I could cover my scars with clays and paints, or even perhaps the attentions of some physician or flesh-healer. My hair, though. I would be faced with the work of another span of my lifetime to grow it out again.
My head felt lighter when he was done. I had never considered what a weight my hair had been, but my neck rose high and strong. “Thank you,” I said in Seliu, then again in Hanchu.
“I keep, I keep.”
“You keep.”
I struggled into the canvas clothes Srini had given me, with my ruined tights and shirt as smallclothes beneath them. My soft leather boots would be worn through in days on these decks, so he had also found me a decent pair of shoes. It seemed easier to remain barefoot. I watched the waves pitch and the birds wheel while the wind rubbed damp, chilly fingers across my scalp. I touched my head. I was not bald, but he had cut me to stubble.
You need a hat, I thought. The air teased a few more tears from my eyes as my scalp grew cold even in the sunlight. Then I went to scrounge a cover for my head.
Freedom had such strange and unexpected prices.
My cooking acquired a cachet aboard Southern Escape. Lao Jia traded me lessons in Hanchu cookery for my culinary knowledge, especially of baking. Bread was not such a great thing in the Han countries, I quickly learned, and desserts even less so. We prepared ambitious dinners for the captain and the passengers, while also spicing up the sailors’ stew and biscuit in different ways.
A fresh catch was brought in almost every day. I knew far more about game than about seafood, and was content to learn from Lao Jia there as well. He showed me how to judge a fish, where to look for worms or other parasites, what to check in the gut to see if it had been unhealthy. Some we threw overboard for the sharks. What he approved of was sliced thin for serving cold or as an inclusion in the fried Hanchu dishes; otherwise thick for me to work with as steaks. I quickly moved toward lighter sauces with sharp flavors to complement the strong tastes and odors of fish.
I brought puddings to the table, pastries, dishes of fruit mashed frozen from the ice boxes below, or mixed into compotes and salads. Lao Jia made his stirred fryings, steamed little dumplings of fish and shrimp, and showed me how to pickle meat until it threatened to rot but tasted divine.
At the same time, Srini came around to the galley or found me on the deck every day and spoke to me awhile in Seliu. He was concerned at how little I knew.
“You are a girl close to grown, but your accent is Stone Coast and your vocabulary has many oddities.”
He was forced to explain several of those words.
“I hate that I talk Petraean so well,” I told him, “and my own words so bad.”
“Then we will talk.” Srini spoke of the doings of the ship, the food we’d prepared that day or the night before, pointed out people and described them to me. He talked about the Wheel, which underlies so much of Selistani life, for the people believe it explains the fate and purpose of their souls. His words were like water on a sun-baked pot. I felt Seliu stirring within me. I knew, most unkindly, that Papa would have said little of what Srini told me, but it was still the tongue of my birth. The sounds lay deep inside, waiting only for an awakening such as this.
I also knew from my time aboard Fortune’s Flight that we would be weeks in the crossing. More, depending on the winds. I also knew from what Federo had told me that I did not want to take passage all the way to Kalimpura.
“Srini,” I said one day, a week into our lessons and eleven days out of Copper Downs. “I must ask your help.”
“What is it, Green?” He smiled his smile, which lifted the droopy mustache he’d been growing. “I have made you a boy, and carried you across the sea. I am too poor a tulpa to do much more than that.”
I laughed, more because he expected me to than because the joke deserved it. “I do not want to go to Kalimpura.”
“In truth?” He switched to Petraean. “Lao Jia has asked me if we can keep you aboard as cook’s mate. After last night’s honeyed smelt in plums, I can say the captain will be easily convinced.”
“No, no. I wish to put ashore at Little Bhopura.” For a moment, I switched back to Seliu. “I must go there.”
“Little Bhopura?” he asked in Petraean. Srini tugged at his chin some more. “I am not even sure where that lies. It has never been a port for any ship I’ve served aboard. Surely it is somewhere in Bhopura?”
“Thirty leagues east of Kalimpura, I am told.” I willed him to hear me and understand my need. “I believe we sail past it on our way. A fishing port, where some bring their rice and vegetables to trade.”
“I am only the purser,” he said sadly. “I book cargos and passengers aboard, but the ship sails under the captain and his master. Once we have agreed where we will put in, it is not for me to say.”
“Then will you do this thing for me.” I switched again to our tongue. “When we are close to Little Bhopura, will you tell me? I would swim ashore.”
“Swim! In those waters? The greater devilfish would make a morsel of you!”
“I will chance it. That is where I must go.” To my surprise, I believed my words.
We made passage over open water for two more weeks after my request. The winds were largely favorable, though our voyage was marked by one great storm and several smaller ones, and once the landing of a gigantic calamar-fish, which was thrown back as an ill omen despite Lao Jia’s begging and my own intense curiosity.
Each day, I carefully sewed another knot in my silk. I had taken no bells when I’d left the attic back in Copper Downs, probably because I hadn’t thought to live beyond that morning. Though that moment was only days in my past, it already had the unreal remove of some other life’s memories. Like something read once, and later misrecalled as if it had happened to me.
It happened that I was on deck immediately after the midday service and shortly before Lao Jia and I would begin cooking in earnest for the dinner. The lookout shouted something I did not understand. This was followed by a great cheering from the crew, and much pointing off the starboard bow.
I went to that rail and stared. After a while, I realized that the horizon didn’t have the same wobbling line that it possessed in the other directions.
Land, I thought. The easternmost edge of this portion of Selistan. Bhopura would be somewhere behind that shore. As would my father. And Endurance.