added the nightly 1000 words

1 files changed, 75 insertions, 57 deletions

diff --git a/lbh.txt b/lbh.txt
index 3acff2c..fb511a5 100644
--- a/lbh.txt
+++ b/lbh.txt
@@ -191,41 +191,25 @@ The tk tacked back and forth up and down the windward side of the island for mos
 
 Though it was very likely everyone on the island had seen them come in, they were still too deep in the marsh to make it to camp before dark. They made the last meal of the season on the ship with Birdie's fish and hatched plans to get tk unloaded the next morning. Birdie, Lulu, and Henri fell asleep making plans for what they would do when the saw their cousins again the next day.
 
-## Chapter 2
+## Chapter 2 Among the Stumps
 
+She was named Linnea for her father's friend in the old country, but her mother called her Lulu the only day she saw her. 
 
+Like her twin sister she'd been easing sheets and tightening lines since she could walk, crossed an ocean before she'd seen five winters, and survived the burning sun and flaming fevers of the Carolina swamps to reach her eighth year. 
 
+Her skin was brown from long days in the sun. She was thin, but strong. Her body all bone and taut ropy muscle. Her hair was brown bleached to blond by the summer sun. She licked her lip, pulling the beads of sweat into her mouth and savoring the salty flavor. *You are the sea, you sweat the sea all day every day.*
 
+Lulu hopped from stump to stump. Crouching down, her knees bent like coiled springs and then sprong, she exploded toward the next stump, landed, teetered, stopped there. There were plenty of stumps. The whole forest was gone. 
 
-Also the ring that functions as a traveler is on the transom. If you you try and haul on the mainsheet while too far forward you'll rip the bimini down.
-
-A flat boat is a fast boat.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-They sail in the next day, father tells a story of some kind, a gannet dives at the boat to add some drama. they reach edisto, sam and charlie, the cousins come out from Charles twon. Tamba and tk and cuthie, he gets introduced, they set up camp, play on the dunes, find the arkhangelsk, make tar, go inland to get chicle, hunt and fish and swim. Then north to Charles town, then the storm. The death of Sam and then the family heads north again.
-
-# Winter
-
-## 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. 
-
-Like her twin sister She'd been easing mainsheets and tightening lines since she could walk, crossed an ocean before she'd seen five north winters, and survived the burning sun and flaming fevers of the Carolina swamps to reach her eighth year. Her skin was brown from long days in the sun. She was thin, but strong. Her body all bone and taut ropy muscle. Her hair was brown bleached to blond by the summer sun.
-
-She licked her lip, pulling the beads of sweat into her mouth and savoring the salty flavor. *You are the sea, you sweat the sea all day every day.*
+"Unbelievable what these people will waste." her father had grumbled earlier as he paddled Lulu and Tamba upriver in the pirogue. Tamba sat in the bow. Lulu in the middle. They were headed inland to inspect stumps. "They probably cut them all down for some waterfront mansion."
 
-Lulu hopped from stump to stump. Crouching down, her knees bent like coiled springs and then sprong, she exploded toward the next stump, landed, teetered, stopped there. There were plenty of stumps. The whole forest was gone. 
+Tamba turned carefully around, not letting his weight move side to side, and smiled knowingly at her. "Rice lulu. They cut em down for rice. They sell the timber to the city." Tamba smiled again, rolling his eyes toward the sky. They both knew her father, who was standing in the stern of the boat, pushing them through the marsh with the long pine pole, could not see Tamba's rolled eyes beneath his hat. But they both waited and heard him grumble again, "stop rolling your eyes behind my back Tamba." They all laughed. 
 
-"Cut em down for the Guvner's mansion," her father had grumbled earlier in the boat. In the bow Tamba rotated his body, careful not to let his weight move side to side, and smiled knowingly at her. "Rice lulu. They cut em down for rice. They sell the timber to the city." Tamba smiled again, rolling his eyes toward the sky. They both knew her father, who was standing in the stern of the boat, pushing them through the marsh with the long pine pole, could not see Tamba's rolled eyes beneath his hat. But the both waited and heard him grumble again, stop rolling your eyes at me Tamba. They all laughed. "The rice will give us food. We won't have to buy it."
+"The rice will give us food. We won't have to buy it."
 
-Lulu heard her father grunt. Tamba turned around again. The boat slid silently along the edge of the marsh, where a thin line of trees still stood, offering some shade from the already brutal mid morning sun.
+Lulu heard her father grunt and mumble something about diggers. Tamba turned around again. The boat slid silently along the edge of the marsh, where a thin line of trees still stood, offering some shade from the already brutal mid morning sun.
 
-The water ran out right before the line of great oaks started. There were clumps of prickly, fan-leaved palmetto trees growing beneath the oaks. The muddy bank of the marsh quickly gave way to the dark coloured clay, mixed with sand and hundreds of years of leafy hummus. This was the soil, rich in nutrients that would grow rice. "For a time at least," her father had said as he dragged the small pirogue up onto the muddy clay bank, next to stand of palmetto and tied the pirogue to a tree. But you take away the pine and it all goes, nothing will hold this soil."
+The water ran out right before the line of great oaks started. There were clumps of prickly, fan-leaved palmetto trees growing beneath the oaks. The muddy bank of the marsh quickly gave way to the dark coloured clay, mixed with sand and hundreds of years of leafy hummus. This was the soil, rich in nutrients, that would grow rice. "For a time at least," her father had said as he dragged the small pirogue up onto the muddy clay bank, next to a stand of palmetto and tied the pirogue to a tree. "But you take away the pine and it all goes, nothing will hold this soil."
 
 "Rice will hold the soil." Tamba stood under the shade of an oak, arms crossed, nearly invisible in the darkness of the shade.
 
@@ -235,7 +219,7 @@ The water ran out right before the line of great oaks started. There were clumps
 
 Her father shrugged. "I'll take your word for it then." He climbed up the bank and reached down to lift Lulu up as well. "I tell you what won't hold it. Potatoes. Turnips. I've seen that."
 
-"Turnips?"
+"Turnips?" Tamba looked quizzically at her father.
 
 "Like a potato, thin skin, waxy, but bitter."
 
@@ -245,66 +229,65 @@ Her father smiled at Tamba. "I am not bitter."
 
 "No, not you." Tamba shook his head slowly, a sly look crossed his eyes, "But you are waxy. Skin like tallow. So white."
 
-Her father laughed. They walked through the oak and palmetto forest toward the bright clearing ahead. Lulu decided that, while she loved her father and looked to him for many things, Tamba was probably the better farmer. But it puzzled her a little why they cared, since neither of them farmed. Her father hated farming and made no secret of it, though he was happy to live by farmers. The Geechee were good farmers. But most of them were not free. A few like Tamba were. But he too was no farmer. 
-
-Tamba and her father were still arguing as they stepped into the clearing. "Mind the gators Lu," her father called over his shoulder. "And the snakes. Fresh cuts and all." 
+Her father laughed. They walked through the oak and palmetto forest toward the bright clearing ahead. Lulu puzzled over why her father and Tamba argued about rice, why they cared at all, since neither of them farmed. Her father hated farming and made no secret of it, though he was happy to live by farmers. The Geechee were good farmers. But most of them were not free. 
 
-Stirring up the forest stirred up the animals of the forest. The plant eaters lost their homes, the insects lost their homes. The animals that ate the insects lost their food. Only the animals at the very top stood any chance. The snake might get the homeless mouse, but eagle got the snake. Nothing got the alligator though. Nothing ever got the alligator. Her father always said not to fear the alligator, but to respect it. Give it a wide berth and do what you can to make sure it doesn't see you as meat. She sat down on stump and wondered what made you look or not look like meat.
+Tamba and her father walked out into the field, leaving her at the tree line. They stopped every so often to dig at the roots of the stumps with their sharpened staves, marking choice stumps as they went. She could hear them still arguing about rice as they worked. "Mind the gators Lu," her father called over his shoulder. "And the snakes. Fresh cuts and all." 
 
-Tamba and her father walked out into the field, leaving her at the tree line. They stopped every so often to dig at the roots of the stumps with their sharpened staves, marking choice stumps as they went.
+Cutting trees stirred up the forest. Stirred up the animals of the forest. The plant eaters lost their homes, the insects lost their homes. The animals that ate the insects lost their food. Only the animals at the very top stood any chance. The snake might get the homeless mouse, but eagle got the snake. Nothing got the alligator though. Nothing ever got the alligator. Her father always said not to fear the alligator, but to respect it. Give it a wide berth and do what you can to make sure it doesn't see you as meat. She sat down on stump and wondered what made you look or not look like meat.
 
-Three hours later the sun was directly overhead. Lulu could just barely see her father on the far side of what had once been a forest of broom pine. Slash pine the sailors called it. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was gone. No more tufts of green above to filter the harsh clean light of day, no more long thin needles to whistle in the wind when the onshore breezes started. It was a dead still afternoon. The world highlighted in a glare that made it difficult to see. It was hot, humid. The air felt like a wet wool blanket wrapped around you. Lulu decided she would not like to be a rice plant or anything else that tried to get along in this place. She liked it better back at camp. By the sea, in the wind. What was life without wind?
+Lulu didn't think alligators were scary anyway. She'd once been sitting on a fallen log in the river upstream, dangling her feet over, gnawing on a stick of dried fish when a small alligator swam up beneath her. It stayed back and seemed to watch her. At first her heart leaped into her throat and beat so hard she could feel the blood pounding in her ears. But then some part of her reasoned with the fear, it was in the water, she was on a log. If it was going to try to jump at her, it would not have swum up on the surface. She turned over the situation in her mind for several minutes and eventually her heart slid back down into her chest, her breath began to come again and she found herself strangely relaxed as the aftermath of fear, the relief of not being eaten washed over her. She and alligator sat like that for some time, eyeing each other. Lulu reasoned they were probably close to the same age. Maybe not in years, but the alligator was probably about the equivalent of an seven year old, which was how old Lulu was at the time. This made her feel closer to it, they had that at least in common. It was not easy being seven. Lulu knew that. The alligator probably knew that to. What did a seven year old alligator have to do? Did it have a moody father? Was it's mother alive? Did it have cousins and aunts and uncles? Did it have to stand watch? Probably not she reasoned, alligators don't sail. Then she pictured an alligator ttrying to sail, an alligator propped up on its hind legs, one hand (or claw?) on the wheel, one holding a spyglass to it's eye.
 
-She jumped to another stump and looked down. It had her father's mark on it. A square inside a diamond. "Two squares really," he had once told her and her sister, "one is just rotated 90 degrees. It's easier to draw than four interlocking circles, which is what I used before."
+The ridiculousness of this image helped relax her even more and she went back to eating her dried fish. The moment she took a bite though, the alligator's eyes flinched. She couldn't describe it, but she saw something almost like hurt flash through it's eyes, the same sort of thing she'd seen in the eyes of her cousins' dogs, the pain of a pack animal whose pack isn't sharing it's food with them. Except that alligator weren't pack animals. Or were they. Lulu wasn't sure, but she didn't think so. Still, did one need to be a pack animal to feel hurt when someone doesn't share their food. She momentarily thought of Birdie and how she always took the last bowl of food, letting everyone else have theirs first. She waved the stick of dried fish at the alligator, "you want some of this?" "Of course you do."
 
-Lulu shielded her eyes from the sun and lifted a gourd of water to her mouth. It was bitter and hot, but it coated her throat for a moment and kept her tongue from feeling so swollen. She was hot and bored. She wished she'd stayed with her sister and her mother, tending the kiln fires. Looking after Henri or even cleaning and drying fish would better than this stillness and heat. Anything to escape this relentless sun. At least at the beach, at camp, there was a breeze. 
+She bit off a decent sized piece and held it up. "This is all I have, and I have to paddle all the way back to camp." She regarded the dried fish in her hand again. "Still, I know what it's like to want something and not be able to get it. So I want you to have it." Having made up her mind to do it, she tossed the fish in to the water quickly before she could change her mind. The alligator swam quickly toward it and in a movement so deft and fast Lulu barely saw it, it swallowed the stick of dried fish. 
 
-Lulu wore a straw hat that a woman had given her the year before when a ship had come to careen on the beach where her family spent the summers making tar. Despite repeated soakings, stretchings and pullings, it was too small for her now. "At least your head is growing," her sister, who was nearly a head taller, teased. Lulu wanted to punch her in the mouth, but instead she took of her hat, hit her sister over the head with it, stuck out her tongue, bared her teeth and growled at her. Then she ran before Birdie could retaliate. Sometimes it was intolerable to have a twin. Usually though these moments were just that, moments. And then they were gone as quickly as she felt them, though she was not above drawing them out for a while to get at her sister, who rarely seemed to feel this way. 
+Now it was closer to Lulu, nearly at her feat. And once again they stared at each other for a long time. Lulu took another bit of fish and broke off a smaller piece and tossed it to the alligator. This time it knew what it was, and it snapped it up without hesitating. Lulu saw its teeth and for a moment she was afraid again. What if it followed her to the bank when she walked up the log and back down to the pirogue, which was tied just upstream? What if she was a fool to feed an alligator and it wasn't thinking she was nice, but trying to decided why dinner was feeding it dinner? 
 
-Sometimes Lulu needed to get away, to be alone, so she had come today with her father and Tamba out into the scorching midday sun to find stumps for the winter's drying time. Her father made carvings in each stump, a square within a diamond, the beginning of wisdom he told her when she asked what it meant. 
+She pushed these thoughts out of her head and decided she like her original story, the alligator was cute, maybe even cuddly in some strange way, and they were friends. Until something happened to make this seem wrong, this was the story she was sticking with. She took another bite of fish and flung some to the alligator, but this time she threw it behind the creature so it had to turn around and swim the other way, she liked her story, but she also liked to cover herself. As the gator turned around and circled back to get the fish she wondered, was feeding an alligator respecting it? Was thinking it was cute respecting it? She wasn't sure. She knew getting it to back away from her was respecting it.
 
-Others would mark their stumps with their own marks and then all of them and their wives and children would come out together every night for a week, maybe two for this field, thought Lulu as she glanced around at the vastness of the clearing. They'd come for a week on either side of the full moon, to work in what light could be had, digging stumps and hauling then back to the beach, to the dunes just beyond camp where they would be piled in great heaps and lie there drying like great white bones bleaching in the sand until they were so weathered they were gray and then in spring, before the heat got too bad, the kilns would be built and lit and the great dry stumps chopped and piled in. 
+Eventually she'd walked off the log and back to her boat to make her way home. The alligator had gone its way. Apparently it had not seen her as dinner. Or she'd given it enough dried fish that it had changed its mind.
 
-Lulu and Birdie and Henri and two other families worth of children, their cousins and friends, would gather moss and dry grass to feed the slow heat of the kilns. As the wood burned the dark pitch drained down to the bottom of the kiln and dripped into barrels set below the catch it. This was the Arkhangelsk tar. The archangel tar that kept the ships afloat, the rigging tight, the sailors safe and bought Lulu and Birdie and Henri a place in the world, clothes to wear, food to eat and sometimes even peppermint treats or dolls or new ribbons for her hair. These stumps were the reason Lulu's life was possible.
-
-But that didn't make the day any cooler or her patience any greater.
+Remembering the alligator made Lulu want to see one. Sort of. A small one again. But it was already mid afternoon and she hadn't seen anything but biting flies and mosquitos. The sun was directly overhead and felt like it had been worked with a bellows. Lulu could just barely see her father on the far side of what had once been a forest of broom pine. Slash pine the sailors called it. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was gone. No more tufts of green above to filter the harsh clean light of day, no more long thin needles to whistle in the wind when the onshore breezes started. It was a dead still afternoon. The world highlighted in a glare that made it difficult to see. It was hot, humid. The air felt like a wet wool blanket wrapped around you. Lulu decided she would not like to be a rice plant or anything else that tried to get along in this place. She liked it better back at camp. By the sea, in the wind. What was life without wind?
 
----
-
-Birdie sat in the shade of the last sago palm. It was the edge of camp. After the palm was the beach. She watched the ocean from the top ridge of the dune, squinting in the bright light of the midday sun. Birdie's real name was tk, after her mother's sister, who was down at the shoreline, pulling in a fishing net with Birdie's own mother. Birdie had helped them cast out the net and secure it to their buoys earlier in the morning. Now she was waiting. Waiting for her brother to play, waiting for her sister to return, her cousins to be done with their chores. She glance up the beach toward their camp but there was no sign of Charles or Samuel. She sighed and plucked at a sea oat, slowly breaking up the stem.
+She jumped to another stump and looked down. It had her father's mark on it. A square inside a diamond. "Two squares really," he had once told her and her sister, "one is just rotated 90 degrees. It's easier to draw than four interlocking circles, which is what I used before."
 
-Down the beach she would see the single mast of the Arkhangelsk. She was a 22ft Bermuda sloop that had been taken by the Whydah and put ashore with a small crew to careen and re-tar. Unfortunately for the Ave Marie, as she was known at the time, her hull was too worm eaten and split even for the quality of tar Birdie's family was know for. 
+Lulu shielded her eyes from the sun and lifted a gourd of water to her mouth. It was bitter and hot, but it coated her throat for a moment and kept her tongue from feeling so swollen. She was hot and bored. She wished she'd stayed with her sister and her aunt, setting up winter camp. She hated staking tents and lugging bundles from the boat though, so when her father, who was worked up about the big cut, asked if she wanted to come along, she'd jumped at the change. Now though, she wished her were setting up with her sister and brother and cousins. Even cleaning and drying fish would better than this stillness and heat. Anything to escape this relentless sun. At least at the beach, at camp, there was a breeze. 
 
-The captain of the Ave Marie had disagreed. While the rest of his crew shrugged and went off hunting the wild boar that were forever rooting in the jack pines, the captain stewed, drinking all afternoon until finally he'd strode into camp shouting for her father, who eventually appeared. There was a good bit of quarreling in several languages until at some point Birdie remembered the captain drew his sword and her father had gone very quiet. Her mother had pulled all the children inside the thatched hut that was their summer home, but Birdie had found a crack in the palm fronds and watched as her father walked very slowly forward until he had placed his neck against the captain's sword, a move that had been so unexpected that the captain did not appear to know what to do. He stammered something Birdie could not hear, though she heard her father's voice quite clearly, I know how I will die and it is not by your hand. The captain had dropped his sword, spun on his heell and marched right out of camp in the direction of Charles town.
+Lulu wore a straw hat that a woman had given her the year before when a ship had come to careen on the beach. Despite repeated soaking, stretching and pulling, the hat was too small for her now. "At least your head is growing," her sister, who was nearly a head taller, teased.
 
-A few hours later the crew of six returned from the woods with a wild boar so huge they staggered under the weight of the pole it was slung out on. Birdie's father had informed them of their captains departure, the news of which they barely acknowledged, bent as they were to the task at hand, namely butchering and roasting the boar. There'd been a great feast in camp that night, with music and dancing that didn't stop until long after Birdie was asleep. The crew had stayed on for a quarter of a moon, until the rum ran out and they too headed off down the road in the direction of Charles town. 
+Lulu wanted to punch her in the mouth, but instead she took off her hat, hit her sister over the head with it, bared her teeth and growled at her. Then she ran before Birdie could retaliate. Sometimes it was intolerable to have a twin. Usually though these moments were just that, moments. And then they were gone as quickly as she felt them, though she was not above drawing them out for a while to get at her sister, who rarely seemed to feel this way. 
 
-Birdie had been worried that the angry captain might return. For several nights she refused to sleep outside until her mother finally coaxed the problem out of her. "Sweet girl, you don't need to worry," her mother had said, "he's gone."
+Sometimes Lulu needed to get away, to be alone, so she had come today with her father and Tamba out into the scorching midday sun to find stumps to dry for next winter. Her father made carvings in each stump, a square within a diamond, the beginning of wisdom he told her when she asked what it meant. 
 
-And indeed he never came back. The Ave Marie had been left where she was when the family departed for their winter camp in the south. When they came back this year they found a storm had pushed the ship high above the tideline, and filled her hull nearly full of sand. She listed considerably to port, but was plenty straight enough to climb about what was left of her decks and bones. 
+Others would mark their stumps with their own marks and then all of them and their wives and children would come out together every night for a week, maybe two for this field, thought Lulu as she glanced around at the vastness of the clearing. They'd come for a week on either side of the full moon, to work in what light could be had, digging stumps and hauling then back to the beach, to the dunes just beyond camp, where they would be piled in great heaps and lie there for a year, drying like great white bones bleaching in the sand until they were so weathered they were gray. Once camp was set up today, perhaps tomorrow, her father and her uncle would begin repairing and improving the kilns so they could begin to burn the stumps they had gathered last year.  
 
-She had been commandeered by Birdie, along with Lulu, Henri and their cousins from up the beach, Charles and Samuel, and Tamba and Kadiatu's boy Cuffee. They'd spent the summer in her, every free moment they had, sailing the sands of the island, re-christening her the Arkhangelsk. Birdie was captain. They had voted, as free sailors did, and she had been elected, and only voted out once, when Lulu called a new vote after Birdie had ordered all the boys over the side to raid an enemy ship for the hundredth time, holding Lulu back. But Lulu's term as captain had lasted only a few days before Henri called a vote that put Birdie back in charge, and set the boys, along with Lulu, over the side to attack the forts and towns of the coasts they sailed.
+Lulu and Birdie and Henri and two other families worth of children, their cousins and friends, would gather moss and dry grass to feed the slow heat of the kilns. As the wood burned the dark pitch drained down to the bottom of the kiln and dripped into barrels set below the catch it. This was the Arkhangelsk tar. The way her father's people had made it for generations he said. The archangel tar that kept the ships afloat, the rigging tight, the sailors safe and bought Lulu and Birdie and Henri a place in the world, clothes to wear, food to eat and sometimes even peppermint treats or dolls or new ribbons for her hair. These stumps were the reason Lulu's life was possible.
 
----
+But that didn't make the day any cooler or her patience any greater.
 
 Lulu hadn't been able to see her father or Tamba for at least an hour. They were resting in the shade on the far side of the clearing she guessed. Which meant another hour before they'd be back.
 
-When they finally did return, both were pouring sweat and no longer bickering about farming or anything else. They drank the gourd of water and sat a while in the shade in silence. Lulu sensed that asking anything at that moment would only have earned her grunts. After a few minutes her father motioned with his head and Lulu set off, back through the trees to the pirogue. 
+When they finally did return, both were pouring sweat and no longer bickering about farming rice or anything else. They drank the gourd of water and sat a while in the shade in silence. Lulu sensed that asking anything at that moment would only have earned her grunts. After a few minutes her father motioned with his head and they all set off, back through the trees to the pirogue. 
+
+Her father ruffled her hair as he stepped over her into the boat. He pushed them out again, following the trail through the reeds, back to the deeper waters of the marsh, toward the river, which would lead them back to beach where camp was being set up. Lulu watched the little black snails, which had climbed ever so slowly up the reeds as the tide had come in while they were hunting stumps. It was was nearly time now little snails, nearly time to slide back down, nearly time for the tide to return.
 
-Her father ruffled her hair as he stepped over her in the boat. He pushed them out again, following the trail through the reeds, back to the deeper waters of the marsh, toward the river, which would lead them back to beach where Lulu and her family currently had their camp. In two more moons they'd head south, down to Savannah for a moon or two, depending on how much work their father found in the shipyards, how many clothes her mother could make or repair for the townswomen. Lulu and her sister would go to school. The thought of it even now filled her with a burning anger that made the backs of her ears itch. She tried to focus on the little black snails, which had climbed ever so slowly up as the tide had come in while they were ashore, which meant the tide was with them to return, but the thought of school kept intruding, pushing the snails down into the water. She hated school because she had to wear a dress. She hated town because she had to wear a dress. All of the spring and all of the summer and all of the fall she wore the clothes of the Edistow, a deerskin skirt that reached midway down her shins and was fringed with shells Lulu was extremely proud of and forever changing when new shells washed ashore. Unlike her sister she often wore a cotton shirt if she was going to be in the sun all day, but she had not today. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a single braid that reached nearly to her waist and had shells woven into it. She looked, aside from her slightly lighter skin, like everyone else on the island they called home.
+The moon was nearly full so she doubted they'd gather any stumps this moon. There was still too much to do. They hadn't yet been to Charlestown. Lulu hated town because she had to wear a dress. Most of the year she wore the clothes of the Edistow, a deerskin skirt that reached midway down her shins and was fringed with shells Lulu was extremely proud of and forever changing when new shells washed ashore. Unlike her sister she often wore a cotton shirt if she was going to be in the sun all day, but she had not today. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a single braid that reached nearly to her waist and had shells woven into it. She looked, aside from her slightly lighter skin, like everyone else on the island they called home.
 
-The Edistow have lived here for hundreds of years, probably more, her father said. There were few of them left, but enough still that her family traded with them and helped them harvest rice in the fall. Fine clothes her father had boasted not long after he built on the circular pole structures he'd seen in their camp and taken to wearing a deerskin loincloth, which made for no end of jeering from sailors, though few of them would say anything to his face. Why mama he said when she blushed at his attire, they've lived here longer than us, I expect they know what's best to wear. 
+The Edistow have lived here for hundreds of years, probably more, her father said. There were few of them left, but enough still that her family traded with them. Her father changed their camp from a canvas tent to one of the circular pole structures he'd seen the Edistow use and it was still what they called home. Her father had also taken to wearing a deerskin loincloth for a while. Lulu thought he looked ridiculous with his thick black beard and hairy chest and then the little flap a deerskin which reached right above his knees and looked, no matter how long it might have been, too small on his rather large body. At nearly six feet their father towered over almost everyone on the island, save her uncle who was about the same height. 
 
-They might know best Lulu thought, but he did look a little ridiculous with his thick black beard and hairy chest and then the little flap a deerskin which reached right above his knees and looked, no matter how long it might have been, too small on his rather large body. At nearly six feet their father towered over almost everyone on the island, save her uncle who was about the same height. 
+Tambo just shook his head and walked away when he saw the loin cloth. Later he told Lulu, "You should have seen when he tried the grass skirts." Kobayashi threatened to sign on with the Royal Navy if her father didn't go back to wearing pants. Her father became rather indignant. "They've lived here longer than we have, I expect they know what's best to wear," he said. But after a few days, and a badly sunburned butt, he had returned to wearing pants.
 
-Lulu liked it better when he wore his sailing britches, as he had today, which was how he looked in her earliest memories and how she preferred he look all the time. Lulu looked back at him now, pushing them slowly along, still sweating, eyes fixed on some point in the distance. Lulu loved her father, but often felt lost around him. He could be stern, or even cross with her or Birdie or Henri, at times, but more often he just seemed to be elsewhere, lost in depths of thought no one, not even her mother seemed to be able to plumb, though he often returned from wherever this place was quickly with startling bursts of temper.
+This was how he looked in her earliest memories and how she preferred he look all the time. Lulu looked back at him now, pushing them slowly along, still sweating, eyes fixed on some point in the distance. Lulu loved her father, but often felt lost around him. He could be stern, or even cross with her or Birdie or Henri, at times, but more often he just seemed to be elsewhere, lost in depths of thought no one, not even Tambo seemed able to plumb. The worst was that he often returned from wherever this far away place was quickly with startling bursts of temper. Just as often though it was laughter. What was hard was figuring out which it would be at any given moment. When they were at sea, it was always laughter. On the land, it was hard to tell.
 
-Mama had a patience her father did not. And she still wore the calico dresses and skirts Lulu barely remembered from the old country, a different river, a different marsh, a different shoreline with the cold smell of wet mud and salt brine, the barnacle crusted rocks that had cut her feet tile they bled. She could still feel them sometimes when she starred into the fire in the evenings or when she watched the stars at night, lying under her sheets in the soft cradle of sand. She did not miss it exactly. She did not remember enough to miss it. But she did think of it sometimes on the edge of sleep, she'd hold it in her thoughts, turn the memories over and around, looking for details she'd missed in all the times before. Though it had been a long time since she'd found a new detail she didn't already hold in her memory, still she did it most every night, letting those old visions usher her into sleep on the hot summer nights when the mosquitoes dove at her all night long, even through the smoke of the smudge fires her father tended all night long.
+Lulu thought about this, and about her mother, about things she barely remembered from the old country, a different river, a different marsh, a different shoreline with the cold smell of wet mud and salt brine, the barnacle crusted rocks that had cut her feet tile they bled. She could still feel them sometimes when she starred into the fire in the evenings or when she watched the stars at night, lying under her sheets in the soft cradle of sand. She did not miss it exactly. She did not remember enough to miss it. But she did think of it sometimes on the edge of sleep, she'd hold it in her thoughts, turn the memories over and around, looking for details she'd missed in all the times before. Though it had been a long time since she'd found a new detail she didn't already hold in her memory, still she did it most every night, letting those old visions usher her into sleep on the hot summer nights when the mosquitoes dove at her all night long, even through the smoke of the smudge fires.
 
 Lulu could feel the water pulling them now, partly the tide of the marsh, partly the current of the river it was drawing them to the sea. The boat rocked slightly as her father laid the pole down and took up the paddle he used to steer. She looked back and he was sitting, smiling now as they drew nearer to home. Stern and distant though he might sometimes be, her father was almost always smiling when his face was turned toward the sea and the wind was on his cheek.
 
 The shadows of the moss dangled like fingers form the oak trees when the pirogue finally nosed onto the sandy shore of the island, not more than half a mile from their home. She hopped off the side into the water and waded ashore. She glanced back at her father who nodded once and she needed no further encouragement, taking off down the path that led back to camp.
 
+
+
+
 Lulu rounded the corner at full speed, through the tall field of sea oats that formed the southern border of their camp, bursting out of the grass like a lion. She smelled the warm sweetness of fish stew. Her mother was stirring a kettle over the fire. Her sister and Henri came running from the other side of camp, calling her to come to the dunes, but she was hungry. She ran over and hugged her mother, who pulled the stray hairs from her face, tucked them back behind her ears and scooped her up a bowl of stew with a piece of cold fried bread. Lulu slurped at the hot stew, earning her a frown from her mother.
 
 "Did you mark stumps?" Birdie watched her eat.
@@ -339,6 +322,41 @@ It was nearly dark by the time they walked back to camp. Their father had spread
 
 She lay for along time whispering with Birdie about plans for the next day, watching the thing sliver of moon drag it's light across the shifting ripple of the sea.
 
+The sun
+
+
+
+Also the ring that functions as a traveler is on the transom. If you you try and haul on the mainsheet while too far forward you'll rip the bimini down.
+
+A flat boat is a fast boat.
+
+## Chapter 3
+
+Birdie sat in the shade of the last sago palm. It was the edge of camp. After the palm was the beach. She watched the ocean from the top ridge of the dune, squinting in the bright light of the midday sun. Birdie's real name was tk, after her mother's sister, who was down at the shoreline, pulling in a fishing net with Birdie's own mother. Birdie had helped them cast out the net and secure it to their buoys earlier in the morning. Now she was waiting. Waiting for her brother to play, waiting for her sister to return, her cousins to be done with their chores. She glance up the beach toward their camp but there was no sign of Charles or Samuel. She sighed and plucked at a sea oat, slowly breaking up the stem.
+
+Down the beach she would see the single mast of the Arkhangelsk. She was a 22ft Bermuda sloop that had been taken by the Whydah and put ashore with a small crew to careen and re-tar. Unfortunately for the Ave Marie, as she was known at the time, her hull was too worm eaten and split even for the quality of tar Birdie's family was know for. 
+
+The captain of the Ave Marie had disagreed. While the rest of his crew shrugged and went off hunting the wild boar that were forever rooting in the jack pines, the captain stewed, drinking all afternoon until finally he'd strode into camp shouting for her father, who eventually appeared. There was a good bit of quarreling in several languages until at some point Birdie remembered the captain drew his sword and her father had gone very quiet. Her mother had pulled all the children inside the thatched hut that was their summer home, but Birdie had found a crack in the palm fronds and watched as her father walked very slowly forward until he had placed his neck against the captain's sword, a move that had been so unexpected that the captain did not appear to know what to do. He stammered something Birdie could not hear, though she heard her father's voice quite clearly, I know how I will die and it is not by your hand. The captain had dropped his sword, spun on his heell and marched right out of camp in the direction of Charles town.
+
+A few hours later the crew of six returned from the woods with a wild boar so huge they staggered under the weight of the pole it was slung out on. Birdie's father had informed them of their captains departure, the news of which they barely acknowledged, bent as they were to the task at hand, namely butchering and roasting the boar. There'd been a great feast in camp that night, with music and dancing that didn't stop until long after Birdie was asleep. The crew had stayed on for a quarter of a moon, until the rum ran out and they too headed off down the road in the direction of Charles town. 
+
+Birdie had been worried that the angry captain might return. For several nights she refused to sleep outside until her mother finally coaxed the problem out of her. "Sweet girl, you don't need to worry," her mother had said, "he's gone."
+
+And indeed he never came back. The Ave Marie had been left where she was when the family departed for their winter camp in the south. When they came back this year they found a storm had pushed the ship high above the tideline, and filled her hull nearly full of sand. She listed considerably to port, but was plenty straight enough to climb about what was left of her decks and bones. 
+
+She had been commandeered by Birdie, along with Lulu, Henri and their cousins from up the beach, Charles and Samuel, and Tamba and Kadiatu's boy Cuffee. They'd spent the summer in her, every free moment they had, sailing the sands of the island, re-christening her the Arkhangelsk. Birdie was captain. They had voted, as free sailors did, and she had been elected, and only voted out once, when Lulu called a new vote after Birdie had ordered all the boys over the side to raid an enemy ship for the hundredth time, holding Lulu back. But Lulu's term as captain had lasted only a few days before Henri called a vote that put Birdie back in charge, and set the boys, along with Lulu, over the side to attack the forts and towns of the coasts they sailed.
+
+---
+
+
+
+
+
+
+They sail in the next day, father tells a story of some kind, a gannet dives at the boat to add some drama. they reach edisto, sam and charlie, the cousins come out from Charles twon. Tamba and tk and cuthie, he gets introduced, they set up camp, play on the dunes, find the arkhangelsk, make tar, go inland to get chicle, hunt and fish and swim. Then north to Charles town, then the storm. The death of Sam and then the family heads north again.
+
+# Winter
+
 ## Fire
 
 Birdie woke early, before first light. She sat up and looked off toward the sea. She saw the silouete of her father down by the shore, his back to her. His hand wen up and pulled down to his head with a movement so sharp and sudden she felt as if the starlight itself bent down to him. She watched at he turned to each direction, and then back to the center where he stood still, facing east.