Part 15 (1/2)

Amaryllis glided into her slip, and I let Garrett and Sun secure the lines. I leaned back against the side, stretching my arms, staring up along the mast. Nina sat nearby, clenching her hands, her lips. Elsie and Californian's captain had gone.

I gave her a pained smile. ”You might have a better chance of getting your extra mouth if you went to a different crew. The Californian, maybe. ”

”Are you trying to get rid of me?” Nina said.

Sitting up, I put my arms across her shoulders and pulled her close. Nina came to me a clumsy thirteen-year old from Bernardino, up the coast. My household had a s.p.a.ce for her, and I was happy to get her. She'd grown up smart and eager.

She could take my place when I retired, inherit Amaryllis in her turn. Not that I'd told her that yet.

”Never. Never ever. ” She only hesitated a moment before wrapping her arms around me and squeezing back.

Our household was an oasis. We'd worked hard to make it so. I'd inherited the boat, attracted the crew one by one-Garrett and Sun to run the boat, round and bustling Dakota to run the house, and she brought the talented J. J. , and we fostered Nina. We'd been a.s.signed fis.h.i.+ng rights, and then we earned the land allocation. Ten years of growing, working, sweating, nurturing, living, and the place was gorgeous.

We'd dug into the side of a hill above the docks and built with adobe. In the afternoon sun, the walls gleamed golden. The part of the house projecting out from the hill served as a wall protecting the garden and well. Our path led around the house and into the courtyard. We'd found flat shale to use as flagstones around the cultivated plots, and to line the well, turning it into a spring. A tiny spring, but any open fresh water seemed like a luxury. On the hill above were the windmill and solar panels.

Everyone who wanted a private room had one, but only Sun did-the detached room dug into the hill across the yard. Dakota, J. J. , and Nina had pallets in the largest room. Garret and I shared a bed in the smaller room. What wasn't house was garden. We had producing fruit trees, an orange and a lemon, that also shaded the kitchen s.p.a.ce. Corn, tomatoes, sunflowers, green beans, peas, carrots, radishes, two kinds of peppers, and anything else we could make grow on a few square feet. A pot full of mint and one of basil. For the most part we fed ourselves and so could use our credits on improving Amaryllis and bringing in specialties like rice and honey, or fabric and rope that we couldn't make in quant.i.ty. Dakota wanted to start chickens next season, if we could trade for the chicks.

I kept wanting to throw that in the face of people like Anders. It wasn't like I didn't pay attention. I wasn't a burden.

The crew arrived home; J. J. had supper ready. Dakota and J. J. had started out splitting household work evenly, but pretty quickly they were trading ch.o.r.es- turning compost versus hanging laundry, mending the windmill versus cleaning the kitchen-until J. J. did most everything involving the kitchen and living s.p.a.ces and Dakota did everything with the garden and mechanics.

By J. J. 's sympathetic expression when he gave me my serving-smoked mackerel and vegetables tonight-someone had already told him about the run-in with the scalemaster. Probably to keep him or Dakota from asking how my day went.

I stayed out later than usual making a round of the holding. Not that I expected to find anything wrong. It was for my own peace of mind, looking at what we'd built with my own eyes, putting my hand on the trunk of the windmill, running the leaves of the lemon tree across my palms, ensuring that none of it had vanished, that it wasn't going to. It had become a ritual.

In bed I held tight to Garrett, to give and get comfort, skin against skin, under the sheet, under the warm air coming in through the open skylight above our bed.

”Bad day?” he said.

”Can never be a bad day when the s.h.i.+p and crew come home safe,” I said. But my voice was flat.

Garrett s.h.i.+fted, running a hand down my back, arranging his arms to pull me tight against him. Our legs twined together. My nerves settled.

He said, ”Nina's right, we can do more. We can support an extra mouth. If we appealed-”

”You really think that'll do any good?” I said. ”I think you'd all be better off with a different captain. ”

He tilted his face toward mine, touched my lips with his, pressed until I responded. A minute of that and we were both smiling.

”You know we all ended up here because we don't get along with anyone else. But you make the rest of us look good. ”

I squirmed against him in mock outrage, giggling.

”Plenty of crews-plenty of households-don't ever get babies,” he said. ”It doesn't mean anything. ”

”I don't care about a baby so much,” I said. ”I'm just tired of fighting all the time. ”

It was normal for children to fight with their parents, their households, and even their committees as they grew. But it wasn't fair, for me to feel like I was still fighting with a mother I'd never known.

The next day, when Nina and I went down to do some cleaning on Amaryllis, I tried to convince myself it was my imagination that she was avoiding me. Not looking at me. Or pretending not to look, when in fact she was stealing glances. The way she avoided meeting my gaze made my skin crawl a little. She'd decided something. She had a secret.

We caught sight of Elsie again, walking up from the docks, a hundred yards away but her silhouette was unmistakable. That distracted Nina, who stopped to stare.

”Is she really that interesting?” I said, smiling, trying to make it a joke.

Nina looked at me sideways, as if deciding whether she should talk to me. Then she sighed. ”I wonder what it's like. Don't you wonder what it's like?”

I thought about it a moment and mostly felt fear rather than interest. All the things that could go wrong, even with a banner of approval flying above you. Nina wouldn't understand that. ”Not really. ”

”Marie, how can you be so. . . so indifferent?”

”Because I'm not going to spend the effort worrying about something I can't change. Besides, I'd much rather be captain of a boat than stuck on sh.o.r.e, watching. ”

I marched past her to the boat, and she followed, head bowed.

We washed the deck, checked the lines, cleaned out the cabin, took inventory, and made a stack of gear that needed to be repaired. We'd take it home and spend the next few days working on it before we went to sea again. Nina was quiet most of the morning, and I kept glancing at her, head bent to her work, biting her lip, wondering what she was thinking on so intently. What she was hiding.

Turned out she was working up the courage.

I handed the last bundle of net to her, then went back to double check that the hatches were closed and the cabin was shut up. When I went to climb off the boat myself, she was sitting at the edge of the dock, her legs hanging over the edge, swinging a little. She looked ten years younger, like she was a kid again, like she had when I first saw her.

I regarded her, brows raised, questioning, until finally she said, ”I asked Sun why Anders doesn't like you. Why none of the captains talk to you much. ”

So that was what had happened. Sun-matter-of-fact and sensible-would have told her without any circ.u.mspection. And Nina had been horrified.

Smiling, I sat on the gun wale in front of her. ”I'd have thought you'd been here long enough to figure it out on your own. ”

”I knew something had happened, but I couldn't imagine what. Certainly not-I mean, no one ever talks about it. But. . . what happened to your mother? Her household?”

I shrugged, because it wasn't like I remembered any of it. I'd pieced the story together, made some a.s.sumptions. Was told what happened by people who made their own a.s.sumptions. Who wanted me to understand exactly what my place in the world was.

”They were scattered over the whole region, I think. Ten of them-it was a big household, successful, until I came along. I don't know where all they ended up. I was brought to New Oceanside, raised up by the first Amaryllis crew. Then Zeke and Ann retired, took up pottery, went down the coast, and gave me the s.h.i.+p to start my own household. Happy ending. ”

”And your mother-they sterilized her? After you were born, I mean. ”

”I a.s.sume so. Like I said, I don't really know. ”

”Do you suppose she thought it was worth it?”

”I imagine she didn't,” I said. ”If she wanted a baby, she didn't get one, did she? But maybe she just wanted to be pregnant for a little while. ”

Nina looked so thoughtful, swinging her feet, staring at the rippling water where it lapped against the hull, she made me nervous. I had to say something.

”You'd better not be thinking of pulling something like that,” I said. ”they'd split us up, take the house, take Amaryllis-”

”Oh no,” Nina said, shaking her head quickly, her denial vehement. ”I would never do that, I'd never do anything like that. ”

”Good,” I said, relieved. I trusted her and didn't think she would. Then again, my mother's household probably thought that about her too. I hopped over to the dock. We collected up the gear, slinging bags and buckets over our shoulders and starting the hike up to the house.

Halfway there Nina said, ”You don't think we'll ever get a banner, because of your mother. That's what you were trying to tell me. ”