lbh1: read aloud chapter 1 and edited.

1 files changed, 20 insertions, 22 deletions

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@@ -23,9 +23,9 @@ By the time they sighted that new world all the twins had left from the land of
 # Main
 ## Chapter 1:  Aboard *Wanderer*
 
-The scent of wet wood and salt mixed with the soft sweetness of cedar too long at sea. The bright briny smell of the wind. She opened her eyes and looked up. A sliver of purple twilight peeked through the canvas of the hammock wrapped up around her. She craned her head back to look at the dark brown mast, crusted with salty white patterns that looked like the drawings of snowflakes in Papa's big book, which was wrapped carefully in walrus leather and stored somewhere in the hold beneath the deck. 
+The scent of wet wood and salt mixed with the soft sweetness of cedar too long at sea. The bright briny smell of the wind. She opened her eyes and looked up. A sliver of purple twilight peeked through the canvas hammock wrapped up around her. She craned her head back to look at the dark brown mast, crusted with salty white patterns that looked like drawings of snowflakes.Everywhere wood creaked. Some of the salt blew loose. The water slapping the hull told her the waves were small. Her hammock, strung between mizzen mast and taffrail, swayed hardly at all. 
 
-The wood creaked. Some of the salt blew loose. The water slapping the hull told her the waves were small. Her hammock, strung between mizzen mast and taffrail, swayed hardly at all. She lay without moving, trying to feel the boat as her father had taught her. She closed her eyes again. The boat was lifting and rolling slightly. They were moving with the current, but not as fast as the light swell rolling past them. At this latitude, this time of year, this close to shore, that would be south, as it had been for days now, although a swell moving south was called a northerly swell, which always mixed her up. 
+She lay without moving, trying to feel the boat as her father had taught her. She closed her eyes again. The boat was lifting and rolling slightly. They were moving with the current, but not as fast as the light swell rolling past them. At this latitude, this time of year, this close to shore, that would be south, as it had been for days now, although a swell moving south was called a northerly swell, because it came from the north, but the name always mixed her up. 
 
 The sail snapped like a whipped wet towel. That meant the wind was light. If the wind were heavier the sail would be stretched tight and silent. She listened again to the sound of the water. It pulsed, rushing by the boat in surges, quiet, then loud. The boat was moving fast enough that the wind probably wasn't light she reasoned. That meant they were running before the wind, otherwise the sail wouldn't have snapped. 
 
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ Birdie smiled in her hammock. She stretched, lifting her arm out to feel the air
 
 Wanderer was 62 feet from her bow sprite to aft rail where Birdie's hammock was tied. She was a gaff rigged Jamaican sloop. Built of strong cedar, sweet smelling. There were two masts, one just fore of midship and another in the cockpit at the rear, where the other end of her hammock was tied. Her father was vague about her origins, or at least how Wanderer came to be his. As Birdie understood it, she was built in a place called Jamaica, sailed all the way to the coast of a place called France where she ran aground. Her cargo was offloaded and she was abandoned to the waves. That was not Poseidon's plan though. The tides pulled her back out to sea, and her father, who happened to be on watch on another ship that night, spied her bobbing in the waves. Sensing a chance that would never come again, he'd woken two companions, sailed alongside her, and then the three trimmed the sails of their vessel, pointed her in the opposite direction, and jumped ship for the new one.
 
-One of those companions, Tamba, was walking toward Birdie. Tamba was a tall, powerfully built man who had sailed most of the way around the world with her father. They had sailed together long enough that neither of them seemed to remember a time when they did not sail together. Tamba was her second father, though she never called him Papa. She hopped out of the hammock, her feet landing on the smooth oak planking of the deck with a light thud.
+One of those companions was walking toward Birdie. Tamba was a tall, powerfully built man who had sailed most of the way around the world with her father. They had sailed together long enough that neither of them remembered a time when they did not sail together. Tamba was her second father, though she never called him Papa. She hopped out of the hammock, her feet landing on the smooth oak planking of the deck with a light thud.
 
 "Morning Birdie." Tamba was from Gambia, across the ocean. An even hotter place, he had told her, which Birdie found difficult to believe. 
 
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ He laid his hands on her shoulders and bent down to press his nose against hers.
 
 "Yes. The sun is rising. Again"
 
-She heard her father chuckle. Then Tamba laughed. He laughed in a way her father never did, deeply, with a kind of rumble like a wagon on a washboard road. He shook her gently by the shoulder. "Appreciate. Always."
+She heard her father chuckle. Then Tamba laughed. He laughed in a way her father never did, deeply, with a kind of rumble like a wagon wheels on a washboard road. He shook her gently by the shoulder. "Appreciate. Always."
 
 "I do. I promise. But I'm hungry. Do you want rice Tamba?"
 
@@ -59,7 +59,7 @@ She could see her brother's unruly mop of hair sticking out the side of the hamm
 
 "Papa?"
 
-He nodded to her and then turned back around to watch the sun rise. Birdie ran aft, ducking under booms, and hopping over the coiled lines and small barrels stacked along the gunwales, a name she did not understand since there were no guns on Wanderer. Well, none on the gunwale anyway. Below deck, in the stern, were two small cannon loaded with forks and knives designed to shred an enemy's sails. "Wanderer is small," Tamba once told her. "We would be blown to bits by a cannon, but we're fast, we can outrun them all. We have just enough fire power to convince any other small, fast ships not to chase us. That's all we need. Never use more than you need." 
+He nodded to her and then turned back around to watch the sun rise. Birdie ran aft, ducking under booms, and hopping over the coiled lines and small barrels stacked along the gunwales, a name she did not understand since there were no guns on the ship. Well, none on the gunwale anyway. Below deck, in the stern, were two small cannon loaded with forks and knives designed to shred an enemy's sails. "Wanderer is small," Tamba once told her. "We would be blown to bits by any ship with cannon. But we're fast, we can outrun them all. We have just enough fire power to convince any other small, fast ships not to chase us. That's all we need. Never use more than you need." 
 
 She ducked into the small doorway that covered the ladder leading below decks. Keeping her hands on the rails -- always keep one hand on the boat was her father's mantra -- she flung herself down with a single leap, bypassing the wooden ladder completely. It was much darker below. It took her eyes a moment to adjust, but then she could make out the glow of the stove and Kobayashi's form bent over the fire, stirring a pot. He never looked up at her thud. He kicked a clay pot by his feet so that it slid slightly toward her. She grabbed a basket hanging from the rafters and scooped rice out of the pot and into it. 
 
@@ -71,21 +71,21 @@ Kobayashi was the smallest of the three, but he had a way of seeming immense whe
 
 "You sound like Aunt Māra." 
 
-Kobayashi frowned at her, but she hardly noticed. Just the thought of Aunt Māra and Birdie's cousins made her heart flutter like a bird's wings. Only a few more days and they would be at Edisto Island. They'd have the forest to run through, the dunes. They'd have space again. Birdie loved the sea, the way it held and rocked them, the way the boat glided through it, and it buoyed the along, still, it was the shoreline that she watched most often. It was there at the shore, the edge, the space where the sea met the land that she felt most herself. 
+Kobayashi frowned at her, but she hardly noticed. The thought of Aunt Māra and Birdie's cousins made her heart flutter like a bird's wings. Only a few more days and they would be at Edisto Island. They'd have the forest to run through, the dunes. They'd have space again. Birdie loved the sea, the way it held and rocked them, the way the boat glided through it, and it buoyed them along. Yet it was the shoreline that she watched most often. It was there at the shore, the edge, the space where the sea met the land that she felt most herself. 
 
 She managed the basket of food with one hand, careful to keep the other on the ladder as she ascended back into the light of the deck. The rolling motion of the swells moving beneath them made it difficult to walk evenly. 
 
-She lurched and stumbled her way to stern where everyone was waiting for the rice and dried fish. She'd be happy to eat some fresh meat again. She hoped Papa and Tamba would go hunting as soon as they made land. She hoped this year she'd be able to hunt too. Her father had promised her last year that this year she would be allow to hunt and the wrestle. But for now she'd settle for something, anything, besides fish. 
+She lurched and stumbled her way to stern where everyone was waiting for the rice and dried fish. She'd be happy to eat some fresh meat again. She hoped Papa and Tamba would go hunting as soon as they made land. She hoped this year she'd be able to hunt too. Her father had promised her last year that this year she would be allow to hunt and wrestle. She'd settle for something, anything, no matter who hunted it. Just no more fish. 
 
 They'd run out of Pemmican two weeks before when they were held up in the outer islands by a late season storm. They'd spent the better part of five days beached, living almost entirely below deck, huddled out of the wind and rain, wishing for sunshine. When they finally floated Wanderer again after the storm had passed, a few days of rough seas seemed like nothing. Anything was better than being wet and cold and chewing sand in the ceaseless wind. 
 
-The remains of that wind had borne them south quickly. They'd hugged the shoreline, out of the strong northward current that ran further offshore. They saw sails only twice and both times the ships were too far over the horizon to see more than a top sail. They were big her father said. 
+The remains of that wind had borne them south quickly. They'd hugged the shoreline, out of the strong northward current that ran further offshore. They saw sails only twice and both times the ships were too far over the horizon to see more than a top sail. They were big ships, but it was unlikely they ever saw Wanderer.
 
-Yesterday the wind had finally let up and Birdie had her first good night's sleep in a week. This morning they were using a favorable offshore breeze to ride out further to sea. They wanted some distance from the land as they passed Charlestown. To anyone with a spyglass standing on the shore at the mouth of the Ashley river Wanderer would only be a tiny bit a sail on the horizon. The pilot boats that helped merchant ships navigate the narrow shoals up the river into Charlestown harbor kept a sharp eye out for sails. And not every ship in these seas was welcome on the land. Birdie's family liked to keep to themselves. They only went to towns when they needed supplies and even then their father liked to take the roads rather than bring Wanderer anywhere near a port.
+Yesterday the wind had finally let up and Birdie had her first good night's sleep in a week. This morning they were using a favorable offshore breeze to ride further out to sea. They wanted some distance from the land as they passed Charlestown. To anyone with a spyglass standing on the shore at the mouth of the Ashley river Wanderer would only be a tiny bit a sail on the horizon. The pilot boats that helped merchant ships navigate the narrow shoals up the river into Charlestown harbor kept a sharp eye out for sails. And not every ship in these seas was welcome on the land. Birdie's family liked to keep to themselves. They only went to towns when they needed supplies and even then their father liked to take the roads rather than bring Wanderer anywhere near a port.
 
 Running downwind, as they were, meant they were moving at the same speed as the wind. So even though there was wind all around them, it felt still. Dead still. The warm, humid Carolina air was like sitting inside a wet wool sweater. Birdie sat in the slight shade of the sail, with her back against the mizzen, alternately watching the shoreline for signs of Charlestown, and whittling a whistle she was planning to use to call ducks when they got to the island. That way she could raid their nests for eggs, a treat she could only dream of at sea.
 
-Her father, Tamba, and Kobayashi sat in the stern, taking turns tending the wheel. She did not turn around to see who was at the wheel, she could feel the boat and knew it was her father. The other two were probably smoking their pipes, and scanning the horizon for any sign of sail. They'd done close to the same thing every day since they'd rounded the cape, but now it felt different. Birdie sensed a tension that had not been there when they were farther north. A tension that had not been there, she stopped whittling for a moment and considered it. Had she ever sensed a tension? She could not recall every feeling the tightness in her chest that she felt now. It felt like something was swelling in the air around them, squeezing them somehow. Her father's voice brought her back to the ship.
+Her father, Tamba, and Kobayashi sat in the stern, taking turns tending the wheel. She did not turn around to see who was at the wheel, she could feel the boat and knew it was her father. The other two were probably smoking their pipes, and scanning the horizon for any sign of sail. They'd done close to the same thing every day since they'd rounded the cape, but now it felt different. Birdie sensed a tension that had not been there when they were farther north. A tension that had not been there, she stopped whittling for a moment and considered it. Had she ever sensed a tension? She could not recall ever feeling the tightness in her chest that she felt now. It felt like something was swelling in the air around them, squeezing them somehow. Her father's voice brought her back to the ship.
 
 "You two should relax."
 
@@ -97,11 +97,11 @@ Tamba grunted. "Easier for you to say."
 
 "They aren't hunting you Tam. They aren't hunting anyone. They're hunting imagined glory." Her father laughed softly.
 
-"You think they'll head all way to the islands?" She heard Kobayashi tapping his pipe out on the taffrail with sharp clicks.
+"You think they'll head all the way to the islands?" She heard Kobayashi tapping his pipe out on the taffrail with sharp clicks.
 
 "No."
 
-The rumors from early in the summer, up in the north, were that the British were coming to put an end to piracy. The put Charlestown back on the righteous path as one broadsheet they'd seen had proclaimed. The entire western coast of the Atlantic talked of nothing but pirates that summer. Birdie and her family had overhead plenty during their stay on Block Island, a small, nearly bare island off the coast of the colony of Rhode Island. It had no good harbor, little land worth farming, and almost no one went there, making it a popular destination for ships with cargoes that could not sail into Boston proper and expect a warm welcome. 
+The rumors from early in the summer, up in the north, were that the British were coming to put an end to piracy. To "put Charlestown back on the righteous path" as one broadsheet had proclaimed. The entire western coast of the Atlantic talked of nothing but pirates that summer. Birdie and her family had overhead plenty during their stay on Block Island, a small, nearly bare island off the coast of the colony of Rhode Island. It had no good harbor, little land worth farming, and almost no one went there, making it a popular destination for ships with cargoes that could not sail into Boston proper and expect a warm welcome. 
 
 Wanderer was not a pirate vessel, and did not sail with pirate vessels, but it, and Birdie along with it, definitely knew and spent time with ships and crews that were often called pirate by those that spread rumors up and down the Atlantic coast of the colony. Rumors were always saying the British are coming, her father said, and the British never actually came, or came to the wrong place, or not enough of them came. Birdie had lost track of what it was the British did and didn't do. They seemed about as real as the black and white birds that couldn't fly that Kobayashi swore he had seen on a trip around Cape Horn.
 
@@ -127,15 +127,15 @@ Neither she nor Lulu had any memories of their own mother, save the stories she
 
 She was startled out of a midday drowse by Tamba's shout from the bow. "I see the bank." Birdie jumped up and ran to the bow (grabbing on the way the mizzen mast, rails, lines and other hand holds, as normal people do on a ship), racing past Lulu and Henry coming out of the hold. She nearly slammed into Tamba, but managed to hit the rail next to him instead. She followed his finger and saw the light green patch that marked the bank. 
 
-The bank was a deposit of sand and silt that started a few hundred yards out from the north fork of the Edisto river and stretched between half a mile and a mile out to sea, depending on the year. It was high tide, the bank was still under water, but this year it looked to be shorter than usual. The bank was where they did most of their fishing, and last year they'd even careened a very large ship on it. Birdie had not been allow to come on that ship, but she, her siblings, her cousins, and some of the local kids had all sat on the end of the island and watched as three smaller ships careened the largest ship Birdie had ever seen, a ship called *Revenge*.
+The bank was a deposit of sand and silt that started a few hundred yards out from the north fork of the Edisto river and stretched between half a mile and a mile out to sea, depending on the year. It was high tide, the bank was under water, but this year it looked to be shorter than usual. The bank was where they did most of their fishing, and last year they'd even careened a very large ship on it. Birdie had not been allow to come on that ship, but she, her siblings, her cousins, and some of the local kids had all sat on the end of the island and watched as three smaller ships careened the largest ship Birdie had ever seen, a ship called *Revenge*.
 
 Birdie ran astern to tell her father what they had seen, but he was already standing on the Taffrail, glass to his eye. "Bit smaller this year, eh Birdie?"
 
 "I thought so, but I wasn't sure."
 
-"Must've 'ad some weather this summer." Her father hopped down. "Hope we're done with that," she heard him mutter to himself. He pointed to the wheel. "Bring us out a wee bit." Birdie turned the wheel a quarter to port and Wanderer' nose edged out toward the open ocean, carving a wide berth around the bank. 
+"Must've 'ad some weather this summer." Her father hopped down. "Hope we're done with that," she heard him mutter to himself. He pointed to the wheel. "Bring us out a wee bit." Birdie turned the wheel a quarter to port and Wanderer's nose edged out toward the open ocean, carving a wide berth around the bank. 
 
-Orange-headed gannets and brown pelicans dove at the outer edge of the bank, their sleek wings pulled back until they looked like harpoon tips thrown from some unseen ship sailing in the sky. They sliced through the air and hit the surface of the sea with such a quiet, tiny splash, transformed in an instant from bird to fish. When they surfaced the gannets always with a fish in their beak. 
+Orange-headed gannets and brown pelicans dove at the outer edge of the bank, their sleek wings pulled back until they looked like harpoon tips thrown from some unseen ship sailing in the sky. They sliced through the air and hit the surface of the sea with such a quiet, tiny splash, transformed in an instant from bird to fish. When they surfaced the gannets always had a fish in their beak. 
 
 Birdie turned to her father, "Papa can we fish?" 
 
@@ -145,25 +145,23 @@ Birdie dashed forward and down in the hull. She fumbled around in the darkness n
 
 At the stern she baited the hook, tied it off on the rail, and threw it out. It jerked in her hands as it skipped across the waves, sinking down as she fed out the slack. Before it even sank, she saw the distinctive black and gray stripes of a porgy fish coming for it. "Papa!" she squealed. He glanced back and nodded as the line went taut in her hand, but he turned back to watch the sea in front of them, hunting for the river mouth they would follow into the marshland, where they would secure the boat for the season. 
 
-Birdie pulled in the porgy, which was big enough to feed them all in a stew. Lulu held it for her while she severed its spine with her knife and tossed it in a barrel to let the blood drain out. She baited the hook and tossed it out again. This time, just as she was getting ready to bring her second porgy on board, a gannet dove hard at it, the line jerked and all but the head of her fish was gone. Birdie frantically pulled in the empty line and breathed a sigh of relief when she found the iron hook still there. The hook was, after the doll Aunt Māra had sewn her, her most prized possession. She took it as a sign, and began to coil up the line. It was far easier to fish from the smaller bateau she and her cousins sailed out to the bank. It was a slower boat, which meant their lines sank deeper and the birds rarely had a chance to steal their catch.
+Birdie pulled in the porgy, which was big enough to feed them all in a stew. Lulu held it for her while she severed its spine with her knife and tossed it in a barrel to let the blood drain out. She baited the hook and tossed it out again. This time, just as she was getting ready to bring her second porgy on board, a gannet dove hard at it, the line jerked and all but the head of her fish was gone. Birdie frantically pulled in the empty line and breathed a sigh of relief when she found the iron hook still there. The hook was, after the doll Aunt Māra had sewn her, her most prized possession. She took it as a sign, and began to coil up the line. It was far easier to fish from the smaller bateau she and her cousins sailed out to the bank. It was a slower boat, which meant their lines sank deeper and the birds rarely had a chance to steal their catch. She's wait to fish.
 
 "Coming about," Her father yelled. Birdie instinctively ducked as the booms creaked and groaned and lines whirled and the ship pitched from starboard to port and pointed her nose at a sharp angle to shore.
 
-Wanderer was light, fast and maneuverable. She had a short keel that made it possible to bring her nearly a mile up the Edisto river if they needed. Their winter home was nowhere near that far up river. 
+Wanderer was light, fast and maneuverable. She had a shallow draft which made it possible to bring her several miles up the Edisto river if they needed. Their winter home was nowhere near that far. They made their camp on the island, a mere quarter mile from the Atlantic shore. Wanderer would be kept further up in the marsh though, protected from storms by a massive stand of lobblolly pine that sheltered the marsh.
 
-They made their camp on the island, a mere quarter mile from the Atlantic shore. Wanderer would be kept further up in the marsh though, protected from storms by a massive stand of lobblolly pine that sheltered the marsh.
-
-The worst part of winter camp was arriving. Every year they had to beat upwind, while also fighting the current of the river and constantly sounding to watch for shallows in the muddy brown river mouth. Even now, still a quarter mile off shore, Kobayashi and Tamba were hauling up the sounding lines while her father shortened the lines so they could beat closer to the wind. 
+The worst part of winter camp was arriving. Every year they had to beat upwind, while also fighting the current of the river and constantly sounding to watch for shallows in the muddy brown river mouth. Even now, still a quarter mile off shore, Kobayashi and Tamba were hauling up the sounding lines while her father tried to bring them closer to the wind. 
 
 All Birdie wanted was to get ashore and see Aunt Māra and her cousins. She went below and stowed her fishing gear. She and Lulu climbed to the crows nest on the main mast and began watching for light patches of water that meant shallows.
 
 Their father tacked Wanderer back and forth up and down the windward side of the island for most of the day, waiting for the tide to begin streaming in, since this would give them the added momentum they needed to make it into the river mouth where, for a time, it was too narrow to tack. 
 
-Last year they had to paddle in using two oars that her father had carved from great thin pine trees. It had taken two days of waiting for the wind to die and another half day of paddling. This year the gods smiled on them. The wind shifted to the north enough that they could take right into the mouth of the river where they dropped the main sail and landed just as the sun was disappearing in the tangled trees that was now their western horizon. 
+Last year they had to paddle in using two oars that her father had carved from great thin pine trees. It had taken two days of waiting for the wind to die and another half day of paddling. This year the gods smiled on them. The wind shifted to the north enough that they could take right into the mouth of the river where they dropped the main sail and landed just as the sun was disappearing in the tangled of trees that was now their western horizon. 
 
 Everyone on the island had seen them come in, but they were still too deep in the marsh to make it to camp before dark. They made a stew of Birdie's fish and slept one last night on the ship. While the men hatched plans to get Wanderer unloaded the next morning, Birdie, Lulu, and Henry fell asleep making plans for what they would do when they saw their cousins the next day.
 
-## Chapter 2:  Edisto Landing
+## Chapter 2: Edisto Landing
 
 Lulu flicked her fingers and felt the rough sand fall away and the smooth skin beneath. She was inside a pale white cocoon of sheet. She stretched her arms up over her head, feeling for the edge, for the sand. She found it and pulled the edge of the sheet down over her head. The world was already bright. She sat up to look around.