16
Seasick
1891, June 24: 16-Hour 46
If the lands of the New World remain largely unexplored, the seas remain even more so. Philosophers of New Occident have considered the question: if a patch of ocean belonged to the thirtieth century, would we ever know it while sailing through it? Pragmatically speaking, there is no proven method to determine the various ages of the oceans.
—From Shadrack Elli’s History of the New World
AFTER THE INITIAL dizziness that pitched her to the deck passed, Sophia propped herself up and watched with queasy awe as the ship swung into motion: Calixta’s men trimmed the sails, shouting to one another across the deck until all the sails were taut with wind. The sun faded behind a passing cloud, and the smell of the ocean suddenly engulfed her. Sophia took a deep breath. When she could speak, she tried to apologize for having risked their departure by losing track of time, but no one seemed to think she had done anything wrong. “You’ll want to thank this lad here for spotting you,” Burr had said, throwing his arm around Theo with a grin, “as I’ve thanked him for being such a fine shot. Molasses, eh? You must have hit four barrels. Those are some sticky scoundrels you left behind on the dock. Natural-born pirate, you are.” Theo beamed, seeming almost bashful in the face of Burr’s compliments.
Furthermore, any inconvenience Sophia might have caused apparently paled alongside the tragedy suffered by one of Calixta’s trunks, which arrived on deck with two bullet holes. She vented her fury on the pirate who had carried it and on her brother for failing to carry it himself. Burr strode across the deck as they left the harbor, calling out casual instructions and shaking off the abuse that Calixta hurled at him.
“Would it make you feel better to put a few bullet holes in Peaches?” Burr asked. “Do, by all means.” He cheerfully gestured toward the unfortunate Peaches, an older man who was tugging on his frilled cuffs with a woeful expression.
“I should,” Calixta roared. “Do you know how difficult it is to find petticoats of the right length?”
Peaches shook his head disconsolately. “I’m sorry, Captain Morris.”
“Rather than telling us all about your petticoats, dearest,” Burr said, “perhaps you should check the damage.”
Calixta glared for a moment longer and then opened the trunk. She inspected the clothing in silence with Peaches standing warily in attendance, and finally she looked up with a mollified expression. “Well, it seems my powder-box stopped the bullets. Peaches,” she said icily, “you owe me a new box of face powder.”
“Certainly, Captain; the moment we arrive in port,” he replied, greatly relieved. Calixta went off to her cabin after her trunks. As the pirates moved about with easy laughter and efficiency, Sophia held her head and tried to control the waves of nausea that swept over her.
The pirates were not in the least as she had imagined them. They seemed more like wealthy vacationers, with their extravagant clothing and their nonchalant air. All of them spoke with the precise, almost quaint locution of the Indies. Even the lowliest deckhand seemed to Sophia more like a fancy footman than a sea-toughened bandit.
Theo was already a favorite after his display of marksmanship, and he had been pulled away into conversation with the deckhands at once. “Hey, you all right?” he asked now. Sophia, knowing it was petty but too angry to care, took refuge in her seasickness and would not speak to him. Finally he shrugged and drifted off.
She was rather more inclined to count on the pirates than Theo, since Calixta had saved her pack and Burr had saved her; though it would have been simple enough to leave her stranded on the dock. I’ll have to ask the pirates for help getting to Nochtland, Sophia decided, trying to quell the anxiety that only worsened her dizziness. She could only hope that in Nochtland she would find Veressa and that then, somehow, they would rescue Shadrack before something terrible happened to him.
Even after hours of sailing, the violent seasickness would not recede. She resigned herself to sitting inertly, watching the horizon and battling nausea. As evening fell, they reached a spot of calm weather and the air grew pleasantly cool. Calixta called to her from across the deck. “Sweetheart, dinner in my cabin.”
“I’m going to stay here,” Sophia replied. “I feel worse inside. I’m not hungry anyway.”
“Poor thing. All right, feel better.”
Calixta withdrew, and Sophia made an effort to rise so that she could get a better look at the sunset. Overhead, the stars were beginning to appear and the sky curved in one continuous descent from purple to blue to pink. Sophia stared hard at the pink edge of the sky and momentarily felt her nausea subside. A moment later she heard footsteps and turned to see someone walking across the deck toward her.
“They sent me up to keep you company, dear.” Sophia looked curiously at the old woman who stood beside her. She was no taller than Sophia herself and almost as thin. Though she held herself straight and spoke in a clear voice, she looked older than anyone Sophia had ever seen. Her white hair was braided and pinned up on her head in a long coil, and she wore a neatly pressed lilac dress with innumerable pleats in the skirt and sleeves. “I’m Grandmother Pearl,” she said, laying her wrinkled hand on Sophia’s. “Even though I’m nobody’s grandmother.” She smiled, holding Sophia’s hand in both her own. “And you, they tell me, are seasick, poor child.”
“Yes,” Sophia said. She realized suddenly, from the gentle pressure of Grandmother Pearl’s fingers and the way she held her head, that the old woman was blind. “It won’t go away.”
“Ah,” Grandmother Pearl said, smiling. Her small, white teeth shone—not unlike pearls themselves. “I know why. I can feel it here in your palm.”
Sophia blinked. “You can?”
“Of course, love. It’s plain to anyone who takes your hand. You’re not bound to time. Of course, the way you’ve heard it explained probably makes it sound rather worse. No internal clock, is that what they say? No sense of time?”
Sophia felt herself blushing in the growing darkness. “Yes. It’s true that I have—I always lose track of time. It’s not something I’m proud of,” she mumbled.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, love,” Grandmother Pearl said, still smiling. “It’s a rare gift to be unbound from time. Think of it—you are free to drift, free to float, like a ship with no anchor weighing it down.”
Sophia glanced down at the wrinkled hands around her own. “But sometimes you want an anchor.”
The old woman led her over to the chairs on the deck. “And you have one. Don’t you carry a watch around with you? Don’t people always remind you of the hour? Aren’t you surrounded by clocks, ticking away, telling you the time? Aren’t we all?”
“I guess that is true.”
“So what do you need an internal clock for? Trust me, love. You’re better off. In my ninety-three years I’ve met only three others not bound to time, and they were all exceptional people.”
Sophia absorbed this doubtfully. “But why does that make me seasick?” she asked as they sat.
“Why, because we’re sailing through a soup of all the different Ages. When the Ages came apart, the waters were in one place. Now different Ages mix in the sea, so that every cup contains more than a dozen.”
None of Shadrack’s explorer friends had ever mentioned this. Sophia held her face up to the briny air, as if testing the truth of it. “Is that possible?”