latest changes

1 files changed, 258 insertions, 16 deletions

diff --git a/lbh.txt b/lbh.txt
index 50d614a..1bed886 100644
--- a/lbh.txt
+++ b/lbh.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,26 @@
 % Untitled
+"There's a race of men that don't fit in,
+A race that can't sit still;
+So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
+And they roam the world at will."
+-Robert Service
+
+"On either end of the social spectrum there lies a leisure class." – Eric Beck
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Where there aligaorts in Edisto back then?
+
+Need more dtails of landscape from Bartrum
+
+
+What of the mother. She is always vague. 
+
+
 # Prologue
 
 They were two. Blood covered the sheets. Even the midwife was whimpering and pitiful by the end. "A night and day," their father would say later. Their mother never corrected him. And they were born, one the night, one the day. 
@@ -15,11 +37,6 @@ By the time they arrived all they had left was the memory of the trees. The deep
 
 # Summer
 
-arriving by ship
-    meeting with Cuthie
-    playing on the tree
-    discovering the arkhanglsk
-
 ## Among the Stumps
 
 She was named Linnea for her father's friend in the old country, but her mother called her Lulu from the day she was born. 
@@ -166,7 +183,7 @@ She stood up and wiggled her feet, letting them sink into the sand up to her ank
 
 She took her bowl and stepped out into the shade of the porch her father had built. She sat on a stump and ate. The more she ate the hungrier she felt and before long whe went back inside for anoter bowl. That's my firl said her father, ladeling another bowl for her. Lilah stepped in fater her . Henri still pretended to sleep in the far corner of the hut where he slept with his mother. He was still very much a Mama's boy, probably always would be Birdie figured. 
 
-"You girls ready to tend some fires today?" Her father raised his eyebrows at them, but it was not a question.
+"Today we start the kilns." Her father glanced that them.
 
 "Yes papa," they mumbled between gulps of stew. The bolted a soon as they were done, walking together down to the shore to wash their bowls in the surf and sand. 
 
@@ -176,15 +193,15 @@ Birdie stopped at the shore. Lulu knlt and let the rushing water of the wave fil
 
 Lulu stood up, she was shorter than Birdie by half a head, but she saw it too. "Sail?"
 
-They looked at each other and smiled. A way out of tending the lins. Birdie quickly washed her bowl and they turned and ran back up to camp. Laughing and shouting sail. Her father turned and squinted out at the sea. He hnned and went inside, returning with he spyglass. He trained it on the speck still wavering at the norizen. 
+They looked at each other and smiled. A way out of tending the klins. Birdie quickly washed her bowl and they turned and ran back up to camp. Laughing and shouting sail. Her father turned and squinted out at the sea. He hmmmed and went inside, returning with the spyglass. He trained it on the speck still wavering at the horizen. 
 
-"Topsail, moving southeast." He handed Birdie the glass and she climbed up the nearest dune to get a better look.  Southeast was no good, that meant it was headed away from them, but that made no sense, they should have spotted it earlier if it was coming out of Charles town. They've have seen it well and clear when she rounded cape and turned north, headed for London or tk or tk. The only boats that ever headed southeast were... she glanced over at her father. He was watching her, closely, she could see him smile, she watched him watch her figure it out. Raiders. It was a coasting ship that had drifted too close and, probably unbeknowst to its captain and crew, had been spotted. Word would spread south. Not from there camp, her father never passed sea gossip on as he called it, it was one of the reasons raiders came to their shore, but this one obviously wasn't, which ruined Birdie's hopes of something to do other than feeding kilns. She walked back over to her father and passed the glass to Lulu.
+"Topsail, moving southeast." He handed Birdie the glass and she climbed up the nearest dune to get a better look. Southeast was no good, that meant it was headed away from them, but that made no sense, they should have spotted it earlier if it was coming out of Charles town. They've have seen it well and clear when she rounded cape and turned north, headed for London or tk or tk. The only boats that ever headed southeast were... she glanced over at her father. He was watching her, closely, she could see him smile, she watched him watch her figure it out. Raiders. It was a coasting ship that had drifted too close and, probably unbeknowst to its captain and crew, had been spotted. Word would spread south. Not from their camp, her father never passed on sea gossip as he called it, it was one of the reasons raiders came to their shore in peace, but this one obviously wasn't, which ruined Birdie's hopes of something to do other than feeding kilns. She walked back over to her father and passed the glass to Lulu.
 
-"We'll wait a bit on the fires. We've nothing to trade, don't want to send up anything that might be taken as a signal." 
+"We'll wait a bit on the fires. We've nothing to trade. And it seems they don't need to careen. We don't want to send up any smoke, might be taken as a signal and we've nothing to say." 
 
 Birdie nodded. She screwed up her courage inside and said quickly before she lost her nerve, "Papa, can Lulu and I play at the Arkhangelsk until you need us?"
 
-Her father looked at her darkly, but then he smiled. "What gave you the idea that there was ever a time when I did not need you? I always need you Birdie, at my side, we are jouned at the hip. He clasped a huge hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight against his left and attempted to take a step forward, swinging her alone with him. She laughed and tried to pull away, but his grip was strong, she remained pinned against his leg and he took another, stiff-legged step, swinging her along again. He walked her like that, laughing as they went all the way over to where Lulu stood oblivious to the both of them, watching the sail through the glass. "She's tacking toward us."
+Her father looked at her darkly, but then he smiled. "What gave you the idea that there was ever a time when I did not need you? I always need you Birdie, at my side, we are joined at the hip. He clasped a huge hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight against his left and attempted to take a step forward, swinging her along with him. She laughed and tried to pull away, but his grip was strong, she remained pinned against his leg and he took another, stiff-legged step, swinging her along again. He walked her like that, laughing as they went all the way over to where Lulu stood oblivious to the both of them, watching the sail through the glass. "She's tacking toward us."
 
 Her father stopped and took the glass from her.
 
@@ -206,12 +223,11 @@ Tamba's skin was near black. Light seemed to disappear when it landed on him. Sh
 
 And Birdie new that it was harder for Tamba to navigate the world than it was for her. Many Africans were slaves, and those like Tamba who were not, who had arrived here free men aboard ships they helped to sail were always in danger of becoming slaves. "Englishmen are devils, the worst kind of devils, the dumbest devils, so dumb they don't even know they are devils. Dumbest lot of humans I ever had the misfortune to be among," her father had said once in her hearing. Tamba had nodded with a sad smile Birdie still remembered. It was a smile of defeat, a smile one had when everything else has already been tried and still one was defeated, a smile that protects against a hurt too large to look at otherwise. 
 
----
-Birdie knew this smile because she herself used it at times though she knew not where it came from, how she had acquired it or what it was she did not want to look at, only that it was there, available to her when she need it.
+"We should burn that lot of them," she'd burst out with it so fast she startled even herself. 
 
----
+Her father and Tamba had turned to look at her and her face grew red under their gaze, but then Tamba had grunted and glanced at her father. "That's one we haven't tried. Yet." 
 
-We should burn that lot of them, she'd burst out with it so fast she startled even herself, her father and Tamba had turned to look at her and her face frew red under their gaze, but then Tamba had grunted and glanced at her father, "that's one we haven't tried. yet." Her father smiled at her. A wonderful idea my darling freeman, but, but, we've other business here this go round. Besides, his eyes twinkled impishly, tney'll get theirs, satisfying as it would be for us to be the ones to hand it to them, he glanced at Tamba and said softly, and gods it would be satisfying, that is not our path on this turn. 
+Her father smiled at her. "A wonderful idea my darling freeman, but, but, we've other business here this go round. Besides," his eyes twinkled impishly, "they'll get theirs. Satisfying as it would be for us to be the ones to hand it to them," he glanced at Tamba and said softly, "and gods it would be satisfying, that is not our path on this turn." 
 
 She could tell Tamba did not agree, but held his tongue. She wondered if he were afraid to contradict her father. But that was silly, Tamba called out her father whenever he needed to and half his father's grand plans began in these sessions with Tamba. 
 
@@ -244,14 +260,240 @@ When you drink or eat something you do not just drink the liquid or eat the fles
 
 Her Papa was a quiet man, prone to grunts and nods in lieu of the sort of comforting, I heard you type of comments most people make. He was often absorbed in a task to the degree that he seemed utterly unaware of the world around him and yet sometimes Lulu would notice that he was also watching her, watching her sister and not in fact missing anything that was going on around him at all, that he was in fact more aware of what she was doing than she was. She would pause and think about this sometimes and try to focus herself more fully on what she was doing, if she sould not take in the whole world around her like her father she could at least, she reasoned, pay closer attention to what she was doing.
 
-Thsi time of year that meant gather grasses and helping tend the fires of the kilns. The family had three kilns which burned around the clock for weeks as the stumps slowly burned down and the sap dripped slowly down to fill the buckets below. It was a hot, dangerous time of boil liquids, burning fires and other hazards which Lulu dreaded. No one had ever been burned too badly, though her father had once scalded his hand badly enough that the skin had come off. He made sure that the children did not handle the sap until it had cooled to a less scaulding temperture.
+Thsi time of year that meant gathering grasses and helping tend the fires of the kilns. The family had three kilns which burned around the clock for weeks as the stumps slowly burned down and the sap dripped slowly down to fill the buckets below. It was a hot, dangerous time of boil liquids, burning fires and other hazards which Lulu dreaded. No one had ever been burned too badly, though her father had once scalded his hand badly enough that the skin had come off. He made sure that the children did not handle the sap until it had cooled to a less scaulding temperture.
 
 The sago palm fronds clattered in the wind, a clicking ticking sound like the women's shoes on the plank sidewalks of Charles town.
 
+---
+
+The boat was wooden, 12 feet from bow to stern, wood planked and sealed with the arckhanglsk tar, smooth shiny weathered wood with hardly a splinter in the boat. She ws rigged like a doah, triangular sail, mast near the bow, single ling coming back offf the boom and a tiller in the rear. She had a outrigger spar that would be lashed to the port or starboard gunwale via two blocks her father had attached with nails he'dpryed lookse from the arckhaglske. She would be a palfrom so stable their mother often used it to threw nets beyond the surfline, obut shoe could also be rigged for speed that would outrun every boat the had ever tried to match her. Lulyu had raced her in charles town harbor the winer efore winning by two lengths ten lengh over a very nice, but piirly rigged effort the tk governors siun had put together. He was a nice enough boy shed told Birdie, he ust doesnt know how to sail very well. Or build boats. Birdie had smiled. The took their prize opurse of two bit and bought peppermint sticks and licorish  imported from lindon. Hand their got their mother a brush for her hair. Their faother stood outside the store, sittinng on a barrel, carding something in the shade, watching the world pass but has his knofe flicked seeming absently at the thing piece of oak in his hand. He smiled when they came running out to show him the comb. She'll love that. 
+
+Their mother was a stong independent woman who keep their camp with a nearly military sense of neatness. She didn't care a wit what the girls wore, but if they left a diry bowl lying a about she threaten them with a switch. This only very rarely happend to Birdie, the Lou had a defiant strek that foten set her up and kicked her about in whay  she did not really understand. propelling her down paths she did not mean the woalk, great screaming matches with her sister, stomping and growling in theatrical ways that drove her mother to step in and threaten switching. 
+
+The kettle hung ove rhte fire from the trupod her pap had made from iron taken out of the arkhnglsk. Her father was not a smith, but he' watched the man in Chrlestown enough to get ht ebasics. He come back the camp these year and built himself a small forge, and bellows out of sail cloth. So far he;s made two legs of iron for a fire tripod, the their was still a puece of willow, which was stong enough, though eventyually warped from the heard of the cials and had be replaced. 
+
+In the kittle was a bubbling stew full of fish and rice and seasoned with salt and herbs Lulyu hadhelped father from the creak edge the day before. 
+
+The sand was dug out, the six inch deep bit was lined with stone, but left caps on bothe swindward and landward sides so thta the windws would feed the firs enough oxygen even with the in burning almost entirely below the surace oft he sane. Sometime when her father or Tabe brough down a boar their father would dig another put and build a giant fire in it and let it durn down to a huge mountain of cials . Then he'd lay the board meant, wrapped in its down skin on the coals, burry the whole thing over night and then the next wmorning they'd dig it up and featst on meat so sweet and tender you never wanted to eat anythign else ever again. It would last them the better part of weeks, more if the weather was cool enough. They build a tootcellar in the dark shade of the hut, two feath cown in the sand, lined with planks of swap cypress ther papa had split, it kept food cool and fesh for quite some time. At night they banks the fire, but used the coals to keep the previous nights stew hot and in the morning the mother buit up the fire again and boil the stew and that wsas breakfast. 
+
+Sometimes he roasted fish, but mostly lulu loved stews, fish stew, venison stew, boar stew, even rabbit stew wasn't have bad, espcially when the could trade with the Cherokee for ramps, which were lulu's favoir food in the world, at once swwet and sharp;y bitter, they made everything delicsious, When he could her father stuffed the boars with ramps before buring them to cook overnight. The resulting meat was tend an swet and smealed of the earth and tasted, a little bit like heaven Tamba said. 
+
 He father pulled the sail in tight, the boat heaved away from them, but her father leaned back against he gunwale slightly until to reached a balance point that balanced speed and awkwardness, the boat lept across the waves and out beyond the surf line of the sand bar to smoother water. The wind was blowing offshore, a storm from the west would be here tomorrow her father said. 
 
 Her father spun the little boat into the wind, dropped the sail and walked toward the bow to get the net. Birdie sprang up and followed. They heaved the net over the side, letting the drift of the current carry them away from it, spreading it out. Once it was out her father used and oar to bring the boat about to where he wanted it and then he yanked the tk line , shooting the halyard and the sail back up. It caught the wind the minute it was up and tighted the lines of the net, pulling them and the net back toward shore. Birdie leaned over the gunwale and watch as fish swam by and were pulled into the net. 
 
 By the time the neared the surfline again the net was choked with fish. She helped her father pull it in, though it became so heavy that eventually her effort was of little use. Her father wrapped the line around the mast and pulled the net, chock full of writhing fish up against the hull, fell off the wind as the boat came into the break of the sand bar and then, timing it with a wave, surfed the craft expertly over the sand bar and into the more sheltered inner waters where he began to paddle it in the shore.
 
-Hoisting the net, cleanign the fish and drying them. more description of their time at sea, her father smoking, talking of the sea, the old country perhaps, some kind of tradition.
+Hoisting the net, cleanign the fish and drying wonderedthem. more description of their time at sea, her father smoking, talking of the sea, the old country perhaps, some kind of tradition.
+
+---
+
+They had arrived early in the morning, the air still heald the wet chill of night, beads of dew shined on teh gunwales of the boat when Birdie came up to look at the coastline. Her father was on the bowsprit perched precariously, but riding the chop as if on a surfboard, glass to his eye, staring off at a horizon Birdie couldn't see. She came forward to have a look and saw the sail her father wa s studying. He did not look away, but did say, "merchant, heading north. Boston. Maybe Providence. Riding low. Make a prize if anyone gets to her." 
+
+"Will they? "
+
+Her father brought down the glass, and looked down at her. "I don't know. I only know who is where. Last I head Whydah Gally was up that way. Bellamy'd certainly take her, sitting low in the water like that. Not gold, but something out of Charles town." He stared off at the ship, "but you never know. The sea decides."
+
+He jumped down the to the deck and rubbed her head. "It's always cat and mouse. That's why I stay out of it. Who are you rooting for?"
+
+Birdie considered this for a moment, she wasn't sure really. She didn't like the merchant captains she'd met. She was pretty sure she didn't care what happened to them, the way they treated their men they deserved whatever they got. Her father had once told her that there were good captains, he'd never met them but he'd heard stories. He also reminded her that even those ugly mean snorting fat men had wives and children somewhere who end up paupers in debtors prison or some other ill might befall them. Still, she thought of the men and women who sailed with her family, who flew the black flag and, while there were a few she did not like, for the most part they were kind, fair people. They had a code, way of living that was about more than the fortune the merchant men were always chasing. 
+
+Her father dropped bucket over the side and filled it up. He knelt and splashed some water on his face, rubbed his eyes and she walked over the handed him the linen that served as his towel. He washed his face every morning, rain or shine, shivering cold or blistering hear,, it did not mater. He father was a man of unbreakable, unbendable even, habits. Not many. But he always washed his face and he always sat and thought, every monring, nearly without exception. She'd seen him seated near the bow in six foot chop, wind howling down on them and he with his eyes closed, thinking.
+
+He took the towel from her with a thanks and wiped the salt water out of his beard.
+
+"I think I'd like the Whydah to take her," she said. 
+
+He smiled. "I think I would too."
+
+It was well past midday before the glided into the marshes and up the river to Tamba, tk and Cuthie's village. Tamba had waved them down in the marsh, coming out by canoe to guidethem in. Huge storms reshaped the mouth of the river and the marshes every year. Her family knew the river well last year, but that knowledge was dangerously out of date by now. If the wanted to make it to where the tk would be stored, they need someone who had been on the river all winter, knew it well. Tamba was that man. He took the tiller, the only man her father had every let take the tiller in Birdie's time sailing with him, and guided them slowly up the seeming still water. They rode the incoming tide through the marsh, but then the river began to take over, the boat slowed, finally it stilled them completely. The wind was not in their favor so her father locked two sets of oars to each side of the boat and took a middle seat for himself, while Lulu and Birdie and Henri took the other oars. Birdie worked the starboard oar while Henri and Lulu worked the port side. Slowly the boat crept up the river. The deeper water looked black and still but their oars told a different story, battling the steady current of the river that wanted so badly to merge with the sea.
+
+Why do you want it so badly river? Lulu wondered. What do you get out of it? You become salty. You become just another bit of water in the endlessness of the ocean, a drop, every drop once it's own, not joined with others into something more, the sea. The sea. You want to be part of the sea. You are part of the sea, it's a coming home after the long journey down the mountains to here. 
+
+The sea had personality, the sort of thing a single drop of water might lack. The sea was something more, a home, a joining together, but greater than the sum of it parts, it was greater than just about everything. Like the rest of her family, and any one who spent any length of time around it, Lulu prayed to sea every morning, greeted it palms out. Some welcome the sun as a god, others welcome the sun so they can once again see the sea.
+
+arriving by ship
+    meeting with Cuthie
+    playing on the tree
+    discovering the arkhanglsk
+
+
+
+## Sails
+
+Lulu woke from a dream where she was gliding over the water, slow and smooth like a pelican, alone, her wing tips skimming the waves and watching the schools the fish dart from her shadow. And then she was in her usual body, lying on on a calico quilt on the sand, the sun already steaming the air around her, like a hidden kettle just coming to boil. She sat up and stretched and shook Birdie, who swatted at her. 
+
+"Come on, Birdie, lets play what we were playing last night."
+
+Birdie sat up groggy, rubbing her eyes gently as they had all learned to do in a world where you never knew when there might by a grain of sand on your hand. "What game again?"
+
+"Remember?" Lulu held up the braided sweetgrass doll she'd slept with. Lulu like to curl in a ball under the blankets, no matter how hot it might be, and tuck her doll, no matter how scratchy or hard it might be, up against her chest. Her mother said she was a born cuddler. 
+
+"Oh right," Birdie turned away and scanned the sand. Birdie had a habit of flinging her dolls away from her just before she fell asleep. She was not a doll cuddler like Lulu. 
+
+It was Lulu who saw the doll and scrambled out of bed to grab it for her sister. She looked up from the doll and saw her mother coming out of the hut to stir the fire. She was wearing the blue dress with impossibly tiny white and yellow flowers on it that Lulu loved. Her mother was always making what Lulu thought were the most fabulous dresses, but this one she'd made last winter and Lulu had helped sew some of the seams. This morning her long hair was braid twisted up into a coil at the top of her head. Lulu always noticed the whiteness of her neck when she wore her hair up.
+
+
+## Notes
+She has dark hair, an easy smile. She laughs and dances when Papa plays the fiddle. Some string instrument. Sound, the book needs more sound. At night they need to play music and dance around the fire. 
+
+ A solid green dress that is Birdie's favorite and white linen dress that their Papa liked. He grabs her and pulls her into his lap.
+
+How what of the cousins They live further up hte river with Cuthie I think, they come around sometimes, but there is a trail that that the kids take through the woods, or do they need the boat? I don't know, let's say they need the boat fthrough the marsh and then the trail? No the trail, no boat, the boat is Papa;s thing. So there's a trail that leads back through the woods, firstone to cuthie's how and one to their cousin's house.
+
+## Campfire Talk
+
+After dinner the grownups sat afround the fire, Birdie pretended to be asleep, the san was cool on her the skin of her arm, the warmth of the fire . That would not make sense, it's summer. That even a thunderstorm rolls in, cools off the land, the sunsets throught he clouds, the sound of the thunder was like drmming, a marshall, marching ound that advanced across the waves toward them. It was early, far to early for a big storm, those came later, at the end of summer, the first on was the sign it was time to move south, time to head to St Augustine for the winter. This was a thunderstorm from the south. A tk, Tamba called them. It brought a strange drop in temeprature as iff the storm were sucking something out of summer, giving it a viseral punch in the gut. No, as if summer were grathering herself up, taking a deeep breath, a momentary pause from her usual swelter to give them some reprieve. 
+
+Birdie noticed at adults felt it too. After a dinner of fish stew mopped up with bannock, her father pulled out his fiddle and Tamba joined in with some driftwood rasps he'd been working on. The Fiddle and percussion dueled and danced with each other in Birdie's head, first her father leading then Tamba stepping to the front, stomping with his foot to add bass to his scratch and clack percussion.Mama stood up and began to slowly sway her hips, as if the music were pulling her about like a puppet. Auntie tk came back up from the beach and swung immediately into the dance, taking up her sister's arm. Mama danced tk, her braid twisting back and forth, her feet light on the sand. The music found a patterm and the dancers hooked arms like the instruments and began to turn each other. Her uncle attempted to joun in, but neither would make room for him and he sat down again to smoke. 
+
+It wasn't until Henri came rushing in that the sisters broke apart their dance and both reached down to each take one of Henri's arms and they began to turn in the circle, Henri pushing them ever faster. Papa picked up on it, bringing his playing in line with the increasing speed of the dance until all of them were frantically spinning and finally spin apart, spilling into the sand. Papa pulled mama into his lap wrapped his arms around her and began to play again, gesturing to Lulu, your turn. Lulu and Birdie and Henri began their own dance. 
+
+It was late by the time fire died down and Papa traded his fiddle for his pipe. Henri was curled up against Mama, already asleep. Birdie lay next to Lulu, feeling the cool sand againster her arm, the head the fire on her back. She closed her eyes and began to drift toward sleep. In the background her parents and aunt and uncle and Tamba continued to talk in lower tones. Birdie drifted off to sleep but woke up at some point to hear her uncle still talking. 
+
+She drifted in and out of sleep still until she heard her uncle say with conviction in his voice, "I want to come with you this year when you leave." 
+
+She woke up completely. She could almost picture the surprised on Papa's face. It probably matched her own she thought.
+
+"What about your wife and children?" 
+
+"I've built a boat." Birdie's eyes sprung open, he has? 
+
+"I want to sail up to Charles town, trade the furs I've been stockpiling and then use that money to get some supplies and take the boat south."
+
+"That boat of yours won't make it. We'll have to tar her this summer, re-mast her if we can.
+
+"She's my boat, I'll see to it."
+
+Birdie tried to think of what her father would say, but he said nothing. She could hear the soft sigh of his exhale as he puffed on his pipe in silence. 
+
+"You think it's a bad idea."
+
+Her father still said nothing.
+
+"You're worse than my wife," her uncle said.
+
+Her father snorted. "You could learn something from your wife..."
+
+She heard tk stand up. "Maybe you could learn something from me. Maybe you could make some plans with someone else for once instead of keeping all your secrets to yourself."
+
+"Secrets?"
+
+Birdie pretended to roll over in her sleep. Careful to neither open her eyes, nor squeeze them shut, she turned toward the fire so she could see them. Her uncle and her father hand never been the best of friends, but now it sounded very much like they were about to come to some kind of a head and Birdie planned to stop them. She could feel their eyes on her. She tried to relax her body and keep her breathing slow and even.
+
+"I know you don't want me to come south, I know you don't want me to be part of your winter camp because that's where you meet with all your sailing people." 
+
+Her father laughed now. "Is that what you think?"
+
+"It's what I know." Your wife talks to mine. 
+
+Her father said nothing. 
+
+"You don't deny it?"
+
+"No. I don't deny that there are people I know in St Augustine who sail. You have that much right."
+
+Birdie thought of her winter camp. It was much like their summer camp, though there were hardly any trees near the coast. No pines anyway. There were alligators. She spent her time fishing. Her father often worked on ships and did other jobs around town. She loved winter camp, but there was no one to play with and the idea that Samuel and Charles might come to it nearly made her jump up and cry out, yes, yes please come. 
+
+I'm not even sure we're going this year.
+
+What? Why not?
+
+Her father shrugged, took another drag off his pipe. "Things are changing."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"All things."
+
+Birdie risked a peek through the veil of eyelashes. She could see her father, he sat on his stump, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring into the fire. 
+
+"The British are coming."
+
+"The British are already here."
+
+"True. But more of them are coming. Many more. They're headed for Nassau. They need to bring it in line or they'll lose it forever. But they'll get around to Charles town eventually. We'll need to be gone before that."
+
+You're just going to leave? You can't just leave.
+
+Sure I can.
+
+But you're known here, you have a life here, people need you here.
+
+for once Birdie agreed with her Uncle, though the thought of the birish made her angry. She did not like the British. Their soldiers were always drunk, their sailors cruel and unwashed, dirty med who briught nothing but pain and misery to anwhere they went it seemed to here, as far as she had ever seen anyway. Once in Charles town the soldiers in the market had pokd the slave in the market with sticks, did the slave market exist yet?
+
+Let the british come, do you really thing they can control everything, be everywhere?
+
+They aren't going to other with us, we're not big enough to interest them.
+
+They're not going to bother with us beause they are not going to find us here. But do you really thing they would ignore the people who make it possible for their worst enemies to contineu sailing? Continue robbing their merchantmen? Stealing from her? Do you really thingk the Biritish crown is going to ignore that forever?
+
+You're a coward.
+
+Birdie could hear the fire over the silence. She watched her father contemplate his reponse, she could see him staining to hold back whatever impulse his tmemper as sending him. He exhaled slowly. You have never been to see. Her father said quiely. Do not make the mistake of thinking that because you can walk proud on the land, that you hvae anyidea what the sea is capable of doing to you. Do not presume to understand courage when you have never been out of site of land. And do not return to my fire for a while. I do not wish to see you again. I will send one of the children for you when my anger has passed. 
+
+Her father walked off toaward the ocean. Birdie saw him in the moon light take off his deerskin skirt and run into the waves. Her father often swam at night she new. It was something he had doon since he was a small boy. It helps me sleep he had said to her once. The cold helps you sleep. Of course, the cold is not so strong here. 
+
+Her uncle sat on the log, looking around awkwardly. She could hear him muttering something to himself, but could not make out was it was. She rolled over and stared up at the sky.
+
+The British. Coming to Charles town. She watched shooting stars and started to count them, but her eyes kept sliding shut. When she opened them again the sun was just cresting the sea.
+
+
+## Storm
+
+It was late in the afternoon when she felt it. Lulu sat stright up in the hull of the Arkhangelsk and hit her head on a cross spar. Ow, she exclained and quickly followed it with, Birdie, do you smell that? 
+
+What? Birdie paisedand sniffed. What?
+
+The wind isdifferent. 
+
+Birdie sniffed again, she put her nose to a crack and sniffed deeply.
+
+What are you doing sister? asked Henri?
+
+Lu says the wind smell different. 
+
+Hienri too sniffed. He cocked his head to the side and studied birdie or a minute, then turned and studied Lulu. He shrugged. I think it smells like the see.
+
+No said Lulu, it smells like tmore like the sea.
+
+What? While her brother and sister did not noticeit, at nearly the same moment that Lulyu had hit her dead, her father hadalso jerked upright out of a sound sleep in a hammock slug between to pieces of drfitwood. Mother, he shout leaping out of the hammock. It's time. Everything in the boat. 
+
+Now? Are you sure?
+
+Papa had just stopped to sniff again when Lulu came around the corner at full speed and skidded to a halt in from of her father, "Papa, the air smells different, I think there's a storm coming."
+
+He smiled at her and turned to ther mother, yes, mama, I am sure. WE need to go now.i
+
+What about tk uncle?
+
+Her father glanced out at sea. "I'm sure he'll stay in Charles town."
+
+"You're sure."
+
+Her father looked at the ground. "No, I am not sure. I am sure the docks will tell him to stay. Whether he will listen..."
+
+"tk father's name, the boy is with him."
+
+"There's nothing we can do."
+
+I am going to tell tk sister's name"
+
+"There isn't time."
+
+Lulu's mother glared at him. 
+
+"What good would it do tk? She'd worry and make herself sick and still not be able to do anything."
+
+Lulu's mother continued to glared at him, but did not argue. Finally she sighed. Lulu get your brother and sister and then all of you come back here and start helping me pack while your father gets the boat."
+
+"Yes mama."
+
+details of breaking camp, packing everything up. Then moving up the river, past the marshes to the sheltered higher ground. Meeting up with the indians. Playing wiht the kids. The storm hits. The terror.
+
+They had stipped the hug and broken it down completely before the wind ever increased in speek, long before the hoizen turned black. 
+
+It wasn't until the sun was setting that they say the line of clouds, so fark and far off they nearly blended with the orisen. Her father ran up the dunes wiht the spyglass and studied the horizen.
+
+
+
+