diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | cuts.txt | 9 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | lbh.txt | 606 |
2 files changed, 421 insertions, 194 deletions
@@ -1,4 +1,13 @@ +Cuthie was swinging on the vine at the edge of the clearing as Birdie approached. He called out to her as he leaped off the limb and swung out wide over the racks of drying meat and lines of linens hanging in the noonday sun. His white teeth gleamed in the light and made his smile seem like it was a thousand times brighter than her own. She laughed and ran across the compound, jumping at his legs as he passed over her. She scrambled up the tree to the limb he'd leapt from. The branches of the TK were worn smooth from Tamba's hands and hers and Lulu's and Henri's and Francis'; and Charles's and countless other children who'd made the same climb to leap from the rope swing that Tamba had built. The tk nuts around the branch were she stood were gone already. She climbed up one branch higher, where the bark was still rough, fewer hands and feet had tread and she picked a tk nut. Tamba was still swinging, slower now, ever closer to equilibrium. + +When his swing had lost it's momentum he lowered himself hand over fist until he reached the end of the line and then he dropped to the forest floor. The line was just long enough, with a heavy knot at the end, that he could throw it up and over the branch where Birdie stood. + +She waited while he climbed back up and joined her on the limb. She handed him a nut and took the rope. She kept her eyes on his as she casually fell backward gripping the rope. Still, she knew her eyes betrayed her as she left the branch, no matter how many times she did it there was a jolt of fear that went shooting up her spine when all her weight settled onto the line, there was a lot ridding on that instant, it was the instant where you found out if the line would hold, if the branch would still bear your weight and then it was gone and you were with it, chasing the arc of an invisible pendulum out over the clearing Cuthie's family called home. + +Birdie looked down on the garden, the corn still only knee-high, not yet supporting the threading tendrils of bean plants. tk look up food crops of coastal carolina pre-contact. + +Eventually they realized he was not coming, he and samuel and charles and gone off hunting in the woods. They sometimes managed to bring back a rabbit, or a partiage or woodcock, but usually the returned empty handed with hard to believe stories of their nearly amzing feats. Lulu and Birdie usually just nodded and went on with whatever they were doing, though henri was ndid not otherwise tend ot exagerate or make up stories, which always made Birdie wonder if at least the stories he told might actually be true. Especially the stories about Tamba's people living deep in the woods. At the helm Birdie was de Graffe, fearless and fair, loved by the crew. @@ -1,4 +1,8 @@ % Untitled + +"The months and days are travelers of eternity. Just like the years that come and go. For those who live their lives on boats, or lead horses towards old age, their lives are travel, their journeys are home." -- Matsuo Basho, Oku no Hosomichi (1689) + + ''' # Notes @@ -6,7 +10,7 @@ - household is father, Tambo and his wife, plus Kobayashi. Plots -- The british captain from Charletown is also the landowner of th etrees, McPhail. He comes after the family about the tree stumps, which he sees as his, being used for their profit, and also that they make the pirate ships that raid mcphail's ships more seaworth, insult to injury. Add moral complexity for the kids, is papa a bad person? Is the McPhail a bad person? Or is it all just wrong and now can own the trees? +- The british captain from Charlestown is also the landowner of th etrees, McPhail. He comes after the family about the tree stumps, which he sees as his, being used for their profit, and also that they make the pirate ships that raid mcphail's ships more seaworth, insult to injury. Add moral complexity for the kids, is papa a bad person? Is the McPhail a bad person? Or is it all just wrong and now can own the trees? I own them fair and square. She thought this over a for miniute. "No, you don't. You forced out the Ediston and the tk, and the tk. You overwhelmed them with force and marched them out." @@ -21,12 +25,8 @@ How does the storm fit in? No good guys, no bad guys. her father helps both ratham and mcphail. Warns mcphail of the storm, helps bring his ship int to he esuary to shelther, they take the wagon to chareston. -“Everything is possible to him who wills only what is true! Rest in Nature, study, know, then dare; dare to will, dare to act and be silent!” -― Éliphas Lévi, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual - -“Weak people talk and do not act, strong people act and keep silent.” -― Éliphas Lévi, El libro de los sabios: Obra postuma +"Behind the veil of all the hieratic and mystical allegories of ancient doctrines, behind the darkness and strange ordeals of all initiations, under the seal of all sacred writings, in the ruins of Nineveh or Thebes, on the crumbling stones of old temples and on the blackened visage of the Assyrian or Egyptian sphinx... there are found indications of a doctrine which is everywhere the same and everywhere carefully concealed." ― Eliphas Lévi Birdie the artist, Lulu the what? What does Lulu do? We need to get deeper into the kids playing at some point. Maybe this chapter something about them making figures and playing. Or perhaps playing in the Arkhangelsk. Could I insert adventures of the Arkhangelsk as little mini stories within the story? Or should I do that with Papa's stories? I kind of like it as a tale within a tail. Maybe that's Lulu's talent, telling stories. Birdie pants pictures, Lulu tells stories, Henri has adventures or writes maybe? @@ -67,6 +67,16 @@ Birdie the artist, Lulu the what? What does Lulu do? We need to get deeper into - autumn cool, swimming and playing at the beach in the wrecked ship. - further develop the cousins and Kadi +- Storm + - Scenes + - Birdie and her father sense the storm and try to stop the Uncle's boat + - birdie and lulu on the northern edge of the island screaming into the wind + - they go to get kadi + - storm under the boat, aligator scene wiht lulu + - cache barrels of tar in the high ground of the hammocks near their camp + - one breaks + - dark tar on the sand, foreshadowing of oil + - Ratham arrives to careen the ship @@ -83,6 +93,77 @@ Birdie the artist, Lulu the what? What does Lulu do? We need to get deeper into - Ratham helps the father escape, family escapes to sea, heads south toward the Caribean. ''' +# Unused scenes + +## Storm desc + +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. + +## Tamba backstory + + +The storm had been an early one, Tamba and tk were on captain tk's boat, bound for boston with a prize they'd taken off the coast of Florida when the storm came out of the south. Their captain tried to put in at Owen town, but they did not make it, the wind broke the mast and sent the boat over. Tamba and tk knew how to swim, the rest of the crew did not. Even so, they were lucky. They clung to piece of broken mast and managed to steer themselves in the heavy chop such that they madeit to shore. Tamba told of seeing a shark in the shallows on the way in, even it was so bewildered by the storm it showed no interest in them, merely passing by close enough to touch, though Tamba did not, before settling into their wake where it stayed until the water became too shallow for it. + +## Cooking + +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. + +## Delos original sketch + +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. + + + +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 wonderedthem. more description of their time at sea, her father smoking, talking of the sea, the old country perhaps, some kind of tradition. + +## Sighted ship at sea + +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 Owen 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 + + + + # Prologue They were two. Blood covered the bed. Even the midwife was whimpering and pitiful by the end. "A night and day," she said. And they were born, one the night, one the day. @@ -117,7 +198,7 @@ They sail in the next day, father tells a story of some kind, a gannet dives at ## Chapter 1: On The Sea -The smell of wet wood and salt. The scent of the world crept into her hammock before she ever opened her eyes. For the first moment it was the soft sweetness of wood too long at sea and then the bright briny salt smell of the sea itself. She opened her eyes and looked up. A a sliver of purple twilight peaked 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 small hold below her. She did not know where. Neither did her sister. Neither did her brother. It was a mystery they worked on nearly every day they were at sea. +The scent of the world crept into her hammock before she ever opened her eyes. The smell of wet wood and salt. The soft sweetness of wood too long at sea and then the bright briny salt smell of the sea itself. She opened her eyes and looked up. A sliver of purple twilight peaked 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 small hold below her. She did not know where. Neither did her sister. Neither did her brother. It was a mystery they worked on nearly every day they were at sea. 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. @@ -125,13 +206,13 @@ The sail snapped like a whipped wet towel. That meant the wind was light. She li "We're running south, riding a northerly swell, the wind is 6 knots" She announced from the hammock. She heard her sister groan, "show off". Her father chuckled. "You're close Birdie. I'd say dead on with speed and swell. More of a broad reach though. I fell off to snap the sheet so you two'd wake up. Sun will be up soon" -Birdie smiled in her hammock. She stretched, lifting her arm out to feel the air. It was still cool, though wet and heavy. The sodden heat would come even earlier today, as it had every day for the last week. They would make winter camp the next day, maybe the day after, Birdie reasoned. She pulled her head up out of the hammock to scan the deck. +Birdie smiled in her hammock. She stretched, lifting her arm out to feel the air. It was still cool, though wet and heavy. The sodden heat would come even earlier today, as it had every day for the last week. They would make camp the next day, maybe the day after, Birdie reasoned. She pulled her head up out of the hammock to scan the deck. -The tk was 42 feet from her bow sprite to aft rail where Birdie's hammock was tied. 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 the tk came to be in her family. As Birdie understood it, she was built in a place called France, sailed into Danish waters where she ran aground. Her cargo was offloaded and she was abandoned to the waves. That was not Poseidon's plan though. The tides had pulled her back out to sea. And her father, who happened to be on watch on another ship had spied her. Sensing his chance, he'd woken two companions, sailed along side her and the three trimmed the sails of their vessel, pointed her in the opposite direction and jumped ship for the new one. +The tk was 52 feet from her bow sprite to aft rail where Birdie's hammock was tied. 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 the boats origins, or at least how the tk came to be in her family. As Birdie understood it, she was built in a place called France, sailed into Danish waters where she ran aground. Her cargo was offloaded and she was abandoned to the waves. That was not Poseidon's plan though. The tides had pulled her back out to sea. And her father, who happened to be on watch on another ship had spied her. Sensing his chance, he'd woken two companions, sailed alongside her and 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, a tall, powerfully man with skin so black it was almost blue, was walking toward Birdie. She hopped out of the hammock, her feet landing on the smoothly worn oak planking of the deck with a light thud. -"Morning Birdie" Tambo was from Gambia, across the ocean. An even hotter place, he had told her, which Birdie found difficult to believe. He had sailed with her father so long neither of them seemed to remember a time when they did not sail together. +"Morning Birdie." Tambo was from Gambia, across the ocean. An even hotter place, he had told her, which Birdie found difficult to believe. He had sailed with her father so long neither of them seemed to remember a time when they did not sail together. "Good morning Tambo." @@ -707,10 +788,7 @@ After she had helped Francis limp back to their camp, and her father and Tambo h She lay back on the sand and closed her eyes, and she immediately felt something strange happening in her body, or to the world around her, she couldn't tell. At first she thought perhaps it was the linger pitch and roll of the boat, which stayed with you even after you got out. But then the whole world seemed to undulate, like a rippled passing through it. She felt as if she were floating in the water, but she was laying on solid sand. Then it came so suddenly it was terrifying. Something immense and unfathomable washed over her, a presence that stretched through her, encompassing her and everything she had ever known or done in an instant. She was afraid to open her eyes. A voice, no, that was the wrong word, something thought words for her, inside her. She could not understand them, a jumble of words falling in her mind so fast that she could not catch them, could not find the meaning of them, not even the order. She felt as if something massive and uncontrollably wild had seized her up in its arms and was taking her on some wild, frightening, but exhilarating dance. She became afraid again and forced herself to breathed slowly in and then slowly out. As she did this is was like the thing gave up and set her down again. She felt it slipping away. She blurted out, "No! Wait!" She wanted it to stay, it was just too much, too sudden, she wanted to say, give me a minute, but it was already gone, slipping away, the world settled, she opened her eyes and there was the sea, Delos, looking as it always did. She stared out the flat horizon where the sky bled into the blue of the sea. Come back. But nothing happened. She got up, she pushed off and climbed in Delos. She raised the sail and turned the boat toward home. - -# Winter - -## Fire +## Chapter 6: Fire It was mid afternoon by the time Papa rounded them up and set them about gathering grass and small sticks. He would light the kilns when the sun went down and he had a very precise mixture of grasses and wood of all sizes that was entirely in his head, but Lulu and Birdie and even Henri had long since learned which thing they needed more of just by glancing at the piles, which they kept separate. Grass, then oak, then walnut. Papa claimed that to get the most tar out of the roots, you needed the right temperature kiln and to get that you need the right combination of each wood, plus there was always some trickery with wind and venting. The secret was to get the wood hot, but control the flow of air so that it burned very slowly and under some pressure that caused it to give up the liquid sap that hid inside of it. This tar or pitch tricked out the base of the kiln into buckets which were then put in barrels and either used by ships that called on their camp, or sold to the shipyards in Charlestown. @@ -720,7 +798,9 @@ Kobayashi and her father worked all the next day dragging last year's stumps to Now they had everything neatly stacked and ready. Lulu was chewing something Francis had brought back from his trip inland. A Mvskoke woman they'd run into far up river had given him a strip of partly dried spruce gum. Francis did not like it. "It's like eating a tree," he said. -"Because you're eating a tree." Lulu told him. He gave the rest to her. She enjoyed it. It *was* like eating a tree. And there was something wonderful about eating a tree. Like it gave her some of its huge spirit. Lulu could almost feel herself expand as she chewed, though she did wondered if the tree people minded her walking among them chew up the flesh of one of the fellow trees. She asked an oak, but it just shrugged off a few leaves in the wind. Everything gets eaten eventually. +"Because you're eating a tree." He gave the rest to her. She enjoyed it. It *was* like eating a tree. And there was something wonderful about eating a tree. It gave her some of its huge spirit. Lulu could almost feel herself expand as she chewed, though she did wondered if the tree people minded her walking among them chewing up the flesh of one of their fellow trees. She asked an oak, but it just shrugged off a few leaves in the wind. Everything gets eaten eventually. + +Lulu wandered away from piles, deeper into the sandy hummock that separated their camp from the marsh adjacent the leeward side of the island. Edisto wasn't a very wide island. It was long and skinny. Not as long and skinny as Ocracoke Island where they stopped on their trips north and south to provision and get the news about points further north or south, depending on which way they were headed, but long and skinny nonetheless. Edisto's marshy backside meandered for miles, as ribbons of the The forest was a clutter of shadow and light. Lulu sat down on a log and watched the shimmering leaves dancing in the breeze high up in the tree tops. Everything was so different up there. She decided to climb up and have a closer look. She cast about for a suitable tree to climb. She was near the marsh, in a mostly oak and pine forest. She would liked to have climbed a pine, but there was nothing to hold onto, the trunks were bare well above her head. She settled an youngish oak that had a huge low limb she should get on and then make her way up it, to the trunk where another branch allowed her to pull herself up. She kept at this for a while, ignore the scrapes from rough bark and trying to not pay attention to how high up she was. It took her a good ten minutes but she manged to get high enough up that she was afraid, and could no longer drive the fear from her mind and continue. She made herself step up to the next branch, the last that seemed like it would support her. She sat down on it, and wrapped her other arm around the trunk and looked out over the canopy. She was higher than the tk's mast, she knew that because she'd been hoisted up it several times to fix things. The mast was 35 feet. She guessed she was forty feet up. High enough to see out over the tops of the trees anyway. She watched two squirrels who'd scolded her the whole way up retreat through the thin branches to the next tree over where they took up their scolding again until Lulu threw a nearby acorn at them and they took off for good. @@ -736,386 +816,430 @@ She turned back and looked at the tree, up at where she'd been. The light was go The smell of simmering boar reached her well before she got to camp. She found her siblings sitting near the fire where she joined them and listened to the grown ups talk. It was dark in the east, stars were out on the horizon. -Then her father stepped toward the fire and raised his hands. Everyone fell silent. "Friends," he began. "Thank you for being here with me." He paused. Lulu looked around the fire at all the faces flickering warm and orange in the firelight and she realized everyone she loved was here in one place, at one time, it did not happen all that often and it made it even better when it did. She felt a wave of warmth pass over her, noting in passing that it washed over her much like the fear had passed through her earlier in the tree. Emotions move like waves, we just have to ride them. +Then her father stepped toward the fire and raised his hands. Everyone fell silent. "Friends," he began. "Thank you for being here with me." He paused. Lulu looked around the fire at all the faces flickering warm and orange in the firelight and she realized everyone she loved was here in one place, at one time, it did not happen all that often and it made it even better when it did. She felt a wave of warmth pass over her, noting in passing that it washed over her much like the fear had passed through her earlier in the tree. Emotions always move like waves, and we ride on them. We can't change the wave, but we can control how we ride it and where it takes us. -"Her father +Her father turned toward the sea and with both her arms still raised over his head, "Hekas, hekas! Este bebeloi!" His voice vibrated as he spoke and Lulu felt the words move through her, vibrating her blood with a tingling sensation that faded slowly as the sounds of the night became louder. He again vibrated the words and again let the sounds of the night once more return. He then spoke in a language neither Lulu nor her sister knew, but which somehow seemed ancient, as if it had been born millenia ago around fires just like this. It was guttural and strange in way that was both thrilling and a little frightening. Lulu knew what it all meant because her father had finally told her last year, but she still could not match the sounds she heard to the meaning in English and trying to do so made her head swirl in a confusion of noise and sense and meaning until she could feel more than she could understand. -Ceremony here. +Tambo took a large stick out of the fire and went to each of the quarters in turn. First the East, then the south, then the west, then the north and then back to the east. At each stop he called on the archangel, the arkangelsk, of that station, offering a bowl of water to each. When he was finished he handed the stick, with its glowing red tip to her father. -He then walked over to Aunt Māra who stood by the fire, stirring the kettle of simmering stew. He handed her a bowl and she ladeled some stew into it and gave it back to him. Lulu's father lifted the bowl in the air, the abalone shell glittered and sparkled in the moon light and not for the first time Lulu thought how lucky she was to be surrounded by such wealth, bowls that shone like gold in the light. "Uriel, bless this earth, bless this bounty we give back to you that you might bless these fires. Thank you for you love." He carried the bowl over and set it down on the first kiln. He repeated this incantation twice more until all three kilns had bowls atop them. Tambo then stepped in and lit each kiln while her father blew on the grass until each was burning. Then he and Tambo stepped back and repeated the names of the hosts and concluded with a hearty, ah-men. +Her father then nodded to Aunt Māra who went to the kettle of simmering stew. He handed her a bowl and she ladled some stew into it and gave it back to him. Lulu's father lifted the bowl in the air, the abalone shell glittered and sparkled in the moon light and not for the first time Lulu thought how lucky she was to be surrounded by such wealth, bowls that shone like gold in the light. "Uriel, bless this earth, bless this bounty we give back to you that you might bless these fires. Thank you for you love." He carried the bowl over and set it down on the first kiln. He repeated this incantation twice more until all three kilns had bowls atop them. Then he laid the stick to the dry grass that Lulu and her siblings had gathered over the past week. Lulu watched as he lit each of the kilns in turn. -"Friends," her father turned back to face the bonfire. His face broke into a smile. "Let's feast." +By tomorrow morning the first buckets of sap would be flowing, and then the fires would not stop until the stumps were burned up. This year Lulu was guessing it would take half a moon. Birdie thought longer, Henri was hoping it would only be a week, but she knew he was wrong. -Everyone cheered and Birdie, always the hungry one, jumped up and was first in line at the kettle. Aunt Māra ladeled out of the stewed meat into abelone bowls. Lulu took hers and walked over the to kilns. She watch as the stew in those bowls slowly came to a boil while hers cooled. +Her father turned back to face the bonfire. He raised his arms again as his voice vibrated a final incantation and then a word Lulu recognized, "ahmen". "Friends," his face broke into a smile. "Let's feast." +Everyone cheered and Birdie, always the hungry one, jumped up and was first in line at the kettle. Aunt Māra ladled out of the stewed meat into the abalone bowls. Lulu took hers and walked over the to kilns. She watch as the stew in those bowls slowly came to a boil while hers cooled. She whispered quietly, "thank you for helping us. Thank you for helping me." +--- +The next morning the smell of wood smoke and the faintly sweet scent of tar overwhelmed their camp. Lulu was watching the kilns while she ate, making sure the buckets below them were not too full so that they would be impossible to carry. She was not allowed to actually handle the hot tar. No one but her father and Tambo moved the buckets to the oak barrels, which, when full, were allowed to cool and then Lulu and her sister could hammer on the lids. 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. -She gets down and walks back to camp just as her father is getting ready for his ceremony and the lighting of the fires. +Lulu didn't need to be told twice. The hot tar scared Lulu. It was a fiercely hot, red-brown liquid that boiled and bubbled and almost seemed to snarl in the buckets. It smelled of the forest somehow, like the distilled essence of a tree now made so dense that all the complex smells of the forest, the light smell of living leaves, the floral scent of flowers, earthiness of bark, the soil, the dry leaves, the rotting wood, the mushrooms and lichens and fungus were all condensed down to a single point that was all of them and somehow none of them as well. It was a deep smell, plumbed out of the depths of the earth, too deep, too much all at once. +Lulu did not like the smell of it until the far had been spread on the rigging or hull of a ship. Something about the way it mixed with the salt soaked wood and hemp lines of a ship took the edge off the smell of the tar and made it smell pleasant again, like the forest standing at the edge of the sea. -After the sun when down her father would make an offering to the archangels and then light the fires. By tomorrow morning the first buckets of sap would be flowing, and then the fires would not stop until the stumps were burned up. This year Lulu was guessing it would take half a moon. Birdie thought longer, Henri was hoping it would only be a week, but she knew he was wrong. +What she liked even less than the smell was the heat. Sweat dripped off the end of her nose as she ate. Working the kilns was a constant sweat bath. She sweated gathering wood in the stagnant air of the hummocks around the marsh, sweated while she fed more wood into the kilns, sweated as she sat in camp, doing nothing more than eating. Sweating was simply part of life while the kilns were burning. Even the ocean was no great relief. For the past two days a warm current had made the shallows nearly as warm as the air. It was Lulu's least favorite part of the year, making the Arkhangelsk tar, but she knew it was also the most important part of the year. She often thought the only thing that would make it worse would be having to tan hides while tending the kilns. She never complained about working the kilns or gathering wood though. She did however, complain plenty about tanning hides. Who didn't? It was a smelly boring business rubbing brains all over a hide and scrapping the fur off. This was how she made it through making tar, by telling herself over and over again, at least there were no hides to tan. It's the little things that get you through. +The sun was directly overhead when her father and Tamba returned from a barrel run. As soon as the previous day's tar was cool enough to move they secured it deeper into the marsh. It was unlikely there would be another storm this year, but her father was never a man to take chances on the weather. +He nodded at her as he entered camp. 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. +"Lu, you look pale." He said finally. "Here, drink some water." Her father passed her a gourd and she gulped down the cool water. She had not realized how thirsty she was until she started drinking and then she could not stop. She finished the gourd gasping for breath. -They all sweated. Sweated gathering wood in the stagnant air of the hammuckss around the marsh, sweated paddling the boats back to camp in the fierce noonday sun, sweated piling the sticks beside the fire. If they were fast they were allowed to run down to the sea and jump in between runs, but even the ocean was no great relief on such days when the shallows were nearly as warm as the air around them and they had not time to make their way out to the cool depths. It was Lulu's least favorite part of the year, making the Arkhangelsk tar, but she knew it was also the most important part of the year. She often thought the only thing that would make it worse would be having to tan hides while tending the kilns. She never complained about working the kilns or gathering wood though. She did however, complain plenty about tanning hides. Who didn't? It was a smelling boring business rubbing brains all over a hide and scrapping the fur off. She did love the shoes her mother had learned to make though. No one wore shoes in the summer, but come winter it was cold enough to want them and nothing she had ever worn felt as nice as the shoes her mother had learned to sew out of deer skin. Tk had taught her and she had learned from a Edisto woman who'd helped Tamba and tk survive after they had washed up on the island just off the coast. +"You need to drink more when you're down here with the heat." -The storm had been an early one, Tamba and tk were on captain tk's boat, bound for boston with a prize they'd taken off the coast of Florida when the storm came out of the south. Their captain tried to put in at Owen town, but they did not make it, the wind broke the mast and sent the boat over. Tamba and tk knew how to swim, the rest of the crew did not. Even so, they were lucky. They clung to piece of broken mast and managed to steer themselves in the heavy chop such that they madeit to shore. Tamba told of seeing a shark in the shallows on the way in, even it was so bewildered by the storm it showed no interest in them, merely passing by close enough to touch, though Tamba did not, before settling into their wake where it stayed until the water became too shallow for it. +"Yes, Papa." ---- +"You can go now. Tambo and I will take over here." +Lulu smiled and dashed off before he could change his mind. She knew Birdie and Henri were down at the ship. She found them playing with their cousins. Or rather Birdie and Francis were playing one game and Henri and Owen appeared to be playing another, which included harrassing them with toy arrows, a volley of which appeared just as Lulu was climbing up into the ship. "hey" she shouted as one actually stuck into the wood deck near her foot. She grabbed it. The tip was a shell that had been broken to a point and sharpened. It could easily have split the skin if fired with sufficient force. The closer she looked at it the madder she got. "That could have hurt." She leaned over the railing looking for Owen. She knew Henri hadn't came up with this plan. He might be annoying some times, but he was nearly always kind and never dangerous. There was no sign of either of them. She descended below decks to find Birdie and Francis. +are birdie and francis making out? are they playng doctor or something? Or are they just down there making plans to go after henri and owen? Or did Henri abandon owen and come over to their side. -Details on the day of lighting the kilns, games the kids play, treats they eat, the last bit of gum chichle. Then the fishing +Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she could see a strange dark shape wiggling up under a hole near the sand in the stern. Lulu could not tell who it was and started toward it. It was only then that she noticed Birdie in her periferial vision, sitting on the ground, carving a stick with the knife her father hand given her for Christ Mass last year. Lulu did not acknowledge her sister though, padding softly past toward the stern where the shape had clearly made its way into the boat now. Lulu stopped and slid against a bulkhead to wwait. The figured dusted the sand off itself and began to creep forward. Lulu heard a whispered "Birdie?" just as Henri walked through the bulkhead, past her, without seeing her, and Lulu let out a wild howl and leaped on him, tackling him to the sand. He shrieked and covered his face and before Lulu could properly box his ears he was crying and she felt bad so she stopped, sitting astride him, pinning his shoulders to the ground, she leaned close to his face. "That arrow could have hurt someone." +"I know," he started crying again. "That's why I snuck away." -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. +Lulu rolled off him. "What game are you playing anyway?" -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. +Birdie watched them but did not say anything. -The sago palm fronds clattered in the wind, a clicking ticking sound like the women's shoes on the plank sidewalks of Charlestown. +"We were playing boys against girls." +"Three against one?" +Henri nodded. "I came to make sure Birdie was okay, and to help her." ---- +Lulu glanced up and for the first time realized that Birdie was carving a spear. Not the sort of toy spear they used for pretend fishing when the Arkhangelsk was sailing the sands, but a real spear, of the sort she used for real fishing when the surf was calm and the tk would run close in to shore. +"You going fishing?" +Birdie glanced up. "No." -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. +"What's going on?" Lulu glanced at Henri. He shook his head. She looked over at Birdie, but she only shrugged. -"Today we start the kilns." Her father glanced that them. +"Papa get back?" -"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. +Lulu nodded in the darkness. "He told me I could go." She nodded at the spear, "I'll go fishing with you if you want. Wind is down, should be a good day for it." -Birdie stopped at the shore. Lulu knlt and let the rushing water of the wave fill her bowl and pull the bit of fish at the bottom back out the sea. Birdie watched but she made no move to wash her own bowl. She stared out at the sea where she though she saw something white on the horizen, someting that might be a topsail coming into view. +"I was planning to throw this at Owen." -"Lu, what is that?" +Lulu gulped. "Birdie, that...." Her voice trailed off. -Lulu stood up, she was shorter than Birdie by half a head, but she saw it too. "Sail?" +"I suppose we could fish though. If we don't see him first." -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. +Lulu and Henri looked at each other. "Okay," said Lulu nervously. Well, why don't we leave through the stern, and we'll just... we'll just walk down to the water and if we see they we'll say we aren't playing anymore. Whatever it is that you're playing." -"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 Owen 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. +"I'm not playing." -"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." +"Okay, whatever. Let's just go before you hurt someone." Lulu loved her sister but she was prone to blind rages that were best avoided. Sometimes Lulu could talk her out of them, but usually, she'd learned, the best course of action was to find something Birdie liked to do and try to get her to do it. She was single-minded and once her mind had latched onto something everything else was forgotten. Even the previous thing her mind had been latched onto, like murderous desire to throw spears at her cousin. Lulu had become quite good an managing these rages, unless they happened to be aimed at her, in which case there was little she could do buy run. Or hope that Henri could calm her down, which he was getting better at doing. At least he no longer egged her on, or not very often anyway. -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?" +Lulu stood up. "Can I see it?" -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." +Birdie handed her the spear, and Lulu knew she'd won. She was glad too because the point on the spear, combined with the way Birdie could throw it, would have gone right through Owen if he'd run afoul of it. It was then that Lulu noticed the dark spot on Birdie's leg. -Her father stopped and took the glass from her. +They hit you with an arrow? -"Hey." +Birdie nodded. All at once Lulu could see the streaks on her cheeks and realized that Birdie wasn't mad, she was sad. And hurt. "Sorry," Lulu offered. "Does it hurt?" -He stared for a while. "Indeed she is. Okay girls, you may play, I will fetch you when it's time." +"No. Not anymore." -Lulu and Birdie tore down the slope and through camp, startling the still half asleep Henri, sitting by the fire, groggily spooning fish stew in his mouth. To the Arkhangelsk they cried as they race past him. Henri looked up, but they did not wait. +"I'm sure they didn't mean to." -Eventually they realized he was not coming, he and samuel and charles and gone off hunting in the woods. They sometimes managed to bring back a rabbit, or a partiage or woodcock, but usually the returned empty handed with hard to believe stories of their nearly amzing feats. Lulu and Birdie usually just nodded and went on with whatever they were doing, though henri was ndid not otherwise tend ot exagerate or make up stories, which always made Birdie wonder if at least the stories he told might actually be true. Especially the stories about Tamba's people living deep in the woods. +"No, I don't think so. Still did though." -Tamba was about her fathers age she guessed, perhaps a few years older, the hair at his temples was whiter than her father's, thugh he had no beard to it was hard to say what color it miht have been, her fathers tended closer to silver every time she looked closely at it. Tama and his wive lived deeper in the woods, ten minutes further up the river and then a good walk from the shore. We are not water people he told Birdie when she ased him why they did not live near the beach. We come from jungles hotter than this he smiled. His arms were strong under the shite cotton shirt he always wore. This Engilish was stiff around the edges, acquired from many sources, including her father, who had aquired his from many different people. Birdie liked hearing Tamba tell stories though because his voice and the way he pronounced them made English words sound more beautiful, more thoughtful, more important than when other people talked. +"You can't call back an arrow." This was something their father said, and until this moment Lulu had never really understood what he meant by it. -Her father nodded when she told him this once. "Tamba is like us. He is the Alban of his place. Highlanders always speak less. We put more thought into what we are going to say." +Birdie smiled. "No, you can never call back an arrow." -Birdie wasn't so sure any of them would qualify as highlanders, living as they did, so low, near to the sea. Even Tamba, though he claimed not to be water people, lived by and survived mainly from the water that was ever-present around all of them. +Lulu sat down next to her sister. Henri slumped down into the sand and busied himself drawing with the stick. He always listened to everything they said, but he rarely made any comments of his own. Often they assumed he was in his own world, ignoring him and then weeks later he would make a comment referencing something they had said and Lulu and Birdie would look at each other amazed that not only had heard them talking, but had remembered every detail of it. -Tamba's skin was near black. Light seemed to disappear when it landed on him. She noticed that he used this to his advantage, sometimes to disappear into shadow, sometimes by wearing a white shirt that provided such a contrast he was impossible not to see, a shadow fleshed out into the light. She noticed too that he used clothes in a way that most people did not, they were not simply things that hung over his frame to keep the sun off, they were tools that helped him navigate the world. +This time, after they all fell silent, Henri looked up from a drawing he had made. "You can call back an arrow you know. You just have to tie a string around it before you shoot it." -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. +### Campfire Talk -"We should burn that lot of them," she'd burst out with it so fast she startled even herself. +There was a day, just before the moon that would mark the equinox, when the heat broke. Everyone knew it would return again at least once more, but for a few short days, it was deliciously cool and the breeze came inland in the afternoons. The sago palm fronds clattered in the wind, a clicking ticking sound like the women's shoes on the plank sidewalks of Charlestown. -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." +the grownups sat around the fire talking and Birdie pretended to be asleep. The sand was cool on her the skin of her arm -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. -Birdie pushed the canoe up onto the shore and used her pole to vault out of the stern of the boat, over the water nd land on the shore. She dragged the boat up and tied it off to a Willow that tk tkt tk more details on willow. She walked the path to Tamba and tk's house. Their house was on stilts of cypress, thatched like hers, but better and more substantially made. Tamba and his family were not travelers, they did not move camps like Birdie's family, though she had once overheard her father trying to convince Tamba to come with them when they went to their winter camp. +After dinner that night 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. -Cuthie was swinging on the vine at the edge of the clearing as Birdie approached. He called out to her as he leaped off the limb and swung out wide over the racks of drying meat and lines of linens hanging in the noonday sun. His white teeth gleamed in the light and made his smile seem like it was a thousand times brighter than her own. She laughed and ran across the compound, jumping at his legs as he passed over her. She scrambled up the tree to the limb he'd leapt from. The branches of the TK were worn smooth from Tamba's hands and hers and Lulu's and Henri's and Francis'; and Charles's and countless other children who'd made the same climb to leap from the rope swing that Tamba had built. The tk nuts around the branch were she stood were gone already. She climbed up one branch higher, where the bark was still rough, fewer hands and feet had tread and she picked a tk nut. Tamba was still swinging, slower now, ever closer to equilibrium. +Auntie Māra danced with Kadi, her braid twisting back and forth, her feet light on the sand. The music found a pattern and the dancers hooked arms like the instruments and began to turn each other. Her uncle attempted to join in, but neither of the women would make room for him and he sat down again to smoke. -When his swing had lost it's momentum he lowered himself hand over fist until he reached the end of the line and then he dropped to the forest floor. The line was just long enough, with a heavy knot at the end, that he could throw it up and over the branch where Birdie stood. +It wasn't until Henri came rushing in that the women 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 spun apart, spilling into the sand. -She waited while he climbed back up and joined her on the limb. She handed him a nut and took the rope. She kept her eyes on his as she casually fell backward gripping the rope. Still, she knew her eyes betrayed her as she left the branch, no matter how many times she did it there was a jolt of fear that went shooting up her spine when all her weight settled onto the line, there was a lot ridding on that instant, it was the instant where you found out if the line would hold, if the branch would still bear your weight and then it was gone and you were with it, chasing the arc of an invisible pendulum out over the clearing Cuthie's family called home. +It was late by the time fire died down and Papa traded his fiddle for his pipe. Henri was curled up against Lulu, already asleep. Birdie lay on the other side of Lulu, closest to the fire. She liked feeling the cool sand against her arm, the heat the fire on her back. She closed her eyes and began to drift toward sleep. In the background her father and aunt and uncle and Tamba continued to talk in lower tones. Birdie slept for a minute but woke up at some point to hear her uncle still talking. -Birdie looked down on the garden, the corn still only knee-high, not yet supporting the threading tendrils of bean plants. tk look up food crops of coastal carolina pre-contact. +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 Charlestown, trade the furs I've been stockpiling and then use that money to get some supplies and take the boat north." -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. +"That boat of yours won't make it. We'll have to tar her this summer, re-mast her if we can. -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. +"She's my boat, I'll see to it." -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. +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. -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. +"You think it's a bad idea." -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. +Her father still said nothing. -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. +"You're worse than my wife," her uncle 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 snorted. "You could learn something from your wife..." -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. +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." -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. +"Secrets?" -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. +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 had 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. ---- +Their voices got lower, her uncle seemed to hiss like a snake. -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." +"I know you don't want me to come north, I know you don't want me to be part of your summer camp because that's where you meet with all your sailing people." -"Will they? " +Her father laughed now. "Is that what you think?" -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 Owen town." He stared off at the ship, "but you never know. The sea decides." +"It's what I know." Your children talk to mine. -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?" +Her father said nothing. -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. +"You don't deny it?" -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. +"No. I don't deny that there are people I know on the cape who sail. You have that much right." -He took the towel from her with a thanks and wiped the salt water out of his beard. +Birdie thought of her summer camp. It was much like their summer camp, though there were hardly any trees near the coast. No pines anyway. She spent her time fishing. Her father often worked on ships and did other jobs around town. She loved summer camp, but there was no one to play with and the idea that Francis and Owen might come to it nearly made her jump up and cry out, yes, yes please come. -"I think I'd like the Whydah to take her," she said. +"I'm not even sure we're going this year." -He smiled. "I think I would too." +"What? Why not?" -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. +Her father shrugged, took another drag off his pipe. "Things are changing." -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. +"What things?" -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. +"All things." -arriving by ship - meeting with Cuthie - playing on the tree - discovering the arkhanglsk +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." -## Sails +"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 you know where they will come first to provision. Charlestown. We'll need to be gone before that." -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. +"You're just going to leave? You can't just leave." -"Come on, Birdie, lets play what we were playing last night." +"Sure I can." -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?" +"But you have a life here, people need you here." -"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. +For once Birdie agreed with her Uncle. But the thought of the British coming made her angry. She did not like the British. Their soldiers were always drunk, their sailors cruel. Unwashed, dirty men who brought nothing but pain and misery to anywhere they went, as far as she had ever seen anyway. Once in Charlestown she'd seen soldiers poking the slaves in the market with sticks. -"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. +Let the British come," She realized her uncle was drunk, slurring his words slightly. "Do you really thing they can control everything, be everywhere? Besides, they aren't going to bother with us, we're not big enough to interest them." -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. +"They're not going to bother with us because they are not going to find us here. But do you really think they would ignore the people who make it possible for their worst enemies to continue to sail against them? Continue robbing their merchantmen? Stealing from the crown? Do you really thing the British crown is going to ignore that?" +"You're a coward." -## 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. +Birdie could hear the fire over the silence. She watched her father contemplate his response, she could see him straining to hold back whatever impulse his temper was sending him. He exhaled slowly. And then spoke slowly and clearly. - 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. +"You have never been to sea. Do not make the mistake of thinking that because you can walk proud on the land, that you have any idea what the sea is capable of doing to you. Do not presume to understand courage when you have never been out of sight of land." -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. +Her father stood up and stretched causally. "And do not return to my fire for a while. I do not wish to see you. I will send one of the children for you when my anger has passed." +Her father walked off toward 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 done since he was a small boy. It helps me sleep he had said to her once. The cold helps you sleep. -# Spring +Her uncle sat on the log. She could hear him muttering something to himself, but could not make out was it was. "Come on Māra, lets go." Her aunt raised an eyebrow at him, but got up and gathered her things. -## Campfire Talk +Birdie rolled over and stared up at the sky. -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. +The British. Coming to Charlestown. 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. -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 Māra 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. +# Winter +''' +Storm + - try to stop the cousins from going + - burying their stores, sailing the boat up the river, past Kadis + - storm hits, under the boat, darkness and terror + - alligator scene + - storm aftermath. ship not heard from, waiting for their cousins + - birdie won't eat + - staring out at sea. hating the sea. cursing the sea + another visit from the sea + - Henri crying for owen. We need to add more about them together + - Kadi's grandmother dies. +Sails + - Ratham arrives, break the spell of sadness + - no word of the ship though + - hunting and careening, winter solstice bonfire with the pirates -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. +## Storm -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. +It was late in the afternoon when she felt it. Lulu sat straight up in the hull of the Arkhangelsk and hit her head on a cross spar. Ow, she exclaimed and quickly followed it with, Birdie, do you smell that? -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." +"What?" Birdie paused and sniffed. "What?" -She woke up completely. She could almost picture the surprised on Papa's face. It probably matched her own she thought. +"The wind is different." -"What about your wife and children?" +Birdie sniffed again, she put her nose to a crack and sniffed deeply. -"I've built a boat." Birdie's eyes sprung open, he has? +"What are you doing sister?" asked Henri. -"I want to sail up to Owen town, trade the furs I've been stockpiling and then use that money to get some supplies and take the boat south." +"Lu says the wind smell different." -"That boat of yours won't make it. We'll have to tar her this summer, re-mast her if we can. +Henri 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 sea." -"She's my boat, I'll see to it." +"Yes," said Lulu, "but it smells like more like the sea." -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. +Henri stared. "What did you say?" -"You think it's a bad idea." +While her brother and sister did not notice it, at nearly the same moment that Lulu had hit her head, her father had also jerked upright out of a sound sleep in a hammock slug between to pieces of driftwood. "Tambo!" He shout leaping out of the hammock. "Storm." -Her father still said nothing. +Tambo came slowly out of the hut, wiping the fish guts off his hand with a rag. He looked up at the sky. He frowned. -"You're worse than my wife," her uncle said. +Papa stopped to sniff again when Lulu came around the corner at full speed and skidded to a halt in front of him. "Papa! the air smells different, I think there's a storm coming." -Her father snorted. "You could learn something from your wife..." +He smiled at her and turned to Tambo. "See?" -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." +Tambo grunted. "I see. I see you have raised them like you. Like wolves." He smiled and then it disappeared. "We need to stop Mr tk, he was taking Delos to Charlestown today. -"Secrets?" +Her father glanced out at sea. "I'm sure he'll stay." -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. +"You're sure." -"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 sighed. "Birdie, Lulu, run down to Aunt Māra's camp and make sure they don't do anything stupid like sail for Charlestown." -Her father laughed now. "Is that what you think?" +Birdie glanced at Lulu and together they dashed out of camp. -"It's what I know." Your wife talks to mine. +"And hurry back, we'll be moving to the boat." Her father's voice trailed off as they left the dunes and ducked into the forest, following the well-worn footpath that led down the island to their cousin's camp. That was how Lulu though of it. Her father always called it Aunt Māra's camp. No one called it Uncle tk's camp, though really he was the one who lorded over it. To tell the truth, thought Lulu, I would have much rather been helping to secure our camp. She slowed a little as the oaks thickened and the ground became treacherously crowded with acorns that hurt even her calloused feet. -Her father said nothing. +"Come on Lu, hurry up," Birdie called. "I want to tell them so we can get back and help Papa pack everything up." -"You don't deny it?" +"Let's just go back, they won't leave. The wind is coming up." -"No. I don't deny that there are people I know in St Augustine who sail. You have that much right." +"They're not Alban Lu. They don't know. We have to tell them." -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 Francis and Owen might come to it nearly made her jump up and cry out, yes, yes please come. +"Aunt Māra is mother's sister, she's Alban." -I'm not even sure we're going this year. +Birdie shrugged. "Maybe, but we still have to tell them, Papa told us to." -What? Why not? +Fine." Lulu crossed her arms angrily. "Let's run then." And she took off down the trail, leaving Birdie behind. Aunt Māra's camp, or their cousins' camp, was in nearly the same spot on the north end of the island as Lulu and Birdie's camp was on the south end. Nestled in the first row the dunes, out of the wind, and right by the river, that, while too brackish to drink, was good for fishing, washing, and cleaning. Lulu was panting hard as she rounded the bend and she could hear Birdie's feet pounding the sandy trail just behind her in what had become more a race between sisters than any message carrying errand. They both burst into camp, nearly knocking over Aunt Māra and both doubled over sucking wind, unable to speak. It was Birdie who first looked up and realized to her horror that no one else was around. She put out her arm and caught her Aunt's dress. "Māra, where is everyone?" -Her father shrugged, took another drag off his pipe. "Things are changing." +"They've gone in the boat to Charlestown child, what is it?" -"What things?" +Birdie felt her heart sink. "How long ago?" -"All things." +Māra glanced at the sky. "Left after lunch." -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. +Lulu and Birdie shared a look. On a good day, with a favorable wind, a good boat could make Charlestown in four hours. Delos was a good boat, and the approaching storm would make the wind favorable. Until it made it more than favorable. Still, Lulu had a terrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. A helpless feeling, like the world was careening against her will, she was being pulled by lines should feel all around her, but could not make out which way they were pulling her. She watched Birdie start to cry. She could think of nothing to say. "Bee," she said finally, "Let's run up to the point and see if we can see the sail. Then we'll get back to help Papa." -"The British are coming." +Birdie nodded and they left their Aunt to grab her things and head for their camp where they promised to meet her later. The trail from camp to the beach was hard going at this end of the island, loose sand you could not run in, sharp shells and sticker plants everywhere. It took them longer than either had planned to get out to outlet of the river where the sand bar at low tide was high enough that they could wade across the very and out on the point. A short swim beyond them offshore lay the bank. If they had time that would have been the ideal place to go to look for the sail, but there was no time. Already the wind had begun to pick up. Lulu could feel the pressure dropping. Her ears popped. This was going to be big one. -"The British are already here." +And then they saw it, a tiny white triangle against a blue sea and blue sky that would soon be black. It was too far to hail, too close to make Charlestown by nightfall. Lulu prayed silently, *Please go to shore, please go to shore, please go to shore.* Birdie was crying again. "Come on," said Lulu. "We have to get back." -"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 Owen town eventually. We'll need to be gone before that." +By the time they got back Papa and Henri were on their second sled drag from camp to the boat. Papa pulled, Henri ran behind grabbing anything that fell off. Lulu dashed into the hut and grabbed her bag, which held tk and tk, the only things in the world she cared about. She slung her bag over her shoulder as she waited for Birdie to grab her things. They set off after her father and Henri, who were already well down the trail. At the boat Tambo was already raising the sails while Aunt Māra hurried up and down out of the hold, hauling dried fish and water in small barrels. -You're just going to leave? You can't just leave. +They would sail the tk up river, threading the marshes as quickly as they could, to tk Landing, where they could careen her against a grove of swamp cypress. They would lash her to the trees as best they could and ride it out there. It was not a new plan. They had gone so far as careen her once two years ago, but storm had never materialized. Wherever it went, it had spared this one. Lulu could feel in her bones that this storm was not going away. It was coming here. Now. Tonight. -Sure I can. +The tide was raising tk, her father and Tambo used lines and a bent pine on the hammock next to it to winch it into deeper water. It took the better part of an hour, but she was soon floating. They used the Pirogue to load the last couple barrels of tar, which Kobayashi and her father were still manuevering into the hold as Tambo raised the sail to get a enough speed to fight the river current. -But you're known here, you have a life here, people need you here. +High clouds had been blowing in all afternoon, but it wasn't until the afternoon sun sank below them and headed for sunset that they could see the line of the storm. It was so dark it looked like night blowing across the sea. Her father climbed the mizzen mast with his spyglass and studied the horizon. When he came down Lulu noticed something she had never seen in his eyes before, fear. It chilled her. She shivered and put her arms around him. He knelt down beside her and wrapped his arms around her. "It's going to be okay Lu. I promise." -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 Owen town the soldiers in the market had pokd the slave in the market with sticks, did the slave market exist yet? +She nodded, but said nothing. -Let the british come, do you really thing they can control everything, be everywhere? +"It's going to be a long one, a fierce one, but we will all be alright." -They aren't going to other with us, we're not big enough to interest them. +She looked in his eyes. "How do you know?" -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? +He blinked at her as if this were the silliest question he had ever heard. "Because I asked." -You're a coward. +"Asked who?" -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. +"The sea." -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. +"How does the sea know? Isn't the storm the storm? -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 sea knows everything. Nothing is older than the sea." -The British. Coming to Owen 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. +--- +The darkness of the storm blotted out the sunset. Lulu was wishing she could be wherever the sun was setting. Some place happy and bright. She heard Tambo yell from the bow and both she and Birdie rushed up to see what was the matter. -## Storm +Threading it's way out of cluster of cypress trees was a small dugout with six people in it. At the stern was man, probably about her father's age Lulu guessed. In the bow was a woman, perhaps about the same age, his wife she assumed. Between them, in the line were two girls and a young boy about Henri's age. The older of the two girls held a baby in her arms. The man was calling out to Tambo in a language Lulu did not know well, but recognized as tk. She had seen her father trade with the enough tk that Lulu and Birdie had learned to recognie words that seemed like they meant please and thank you and hello. Lulu heard the man say the word she thought meant thank you. Tambo spoke fluent tk and spoke for some moments as the dugout moved alongside the tk. -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? +He turned to Birdie. "Go tell your father that we're going to give this family a ride and they're going to show us an island, we can careen on the leeward side." -What? Birdie paused and sniffed. What? +"We're not going to tk Landing?" -The wind is different. +"They say the water is already rising there." -Birdie sniffed again, she put her nose to a crack and sniffed deeply. +Lulu said nothing, she watched as the man rought the canoe alongside. -What are you doing sister? asked Henri. +"How come every one asks Birdie to do things and not me? -Lu says the wind smell different. +What are talking about? -Henri 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 sea. +You immediately turned to Cirdie, you didn't even think of turning to me. -"Yes," said Lulu, "but it smells like more like the sea." +He studied her for a moment. "Lulu, go get a line and some rigging out of the hold that we can use to get this family on board." -Henri stared. "What did you say?" +She snapped to attention and smiled. "Yes sir!' -While her brother and sister did not notice it, at nearly the same moment that Lulu had hit her head, her father had also 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." +She took off for the hold. It was dark below, even the faint light of the evening was no help down here. She worked by feel to get several lines, but she could not find the rigging Tambo wanted. She ran back with the lines so the tk could at least tow the canoe along without the poor man having to paddle to keep up. Then she ran back into the hold and felt around where the rigging ought to have been but could not find it. She was about to give up and grab a couple of lines to just tie a ladder when she tripped and fell and landed on the unmistakably painful lumps of tightly knotted hemp lines. The rigging. She dashed back up and with Tambo's help, secured the rigging to the gunwale and lowered the ladder-like rope over the side so the family could climb aboard. -Tk came running out of the hut and looked up at the sky. "Now? Are you sure?" +It took several tries, but they eventually managed to get everyone on board. Tambo took the man to the cockpit to tell her father the directions. Kobayashi came forward with a lantern they hung of the bowsprit to provide some modicum of light as the sun ceased to be of any help. -Papa stopped to sniff again when Lulu came around the corner at full speed and skidded to a halt in front of her father, "Papa, the air smells different, I think there's a storm coming." +"Where were you when I was below?" -He smiled at her and turned to their mother. "Yes, mama, I am sure." +Kobayashi smiled at her, "I was lighting the lattern over by the stove, waiting for you to ask me for help." -What about tk uncle? +"What? I never even saw you." -Her father glanced out at sea. "I'm sure he'll stay in Owen town." +He shrugged. "You never looked, I figured you could see in the dark. You found the rigging didn't you?" -"You're sure." +A flash lit up the sky and the first rumble of thunder drifted toward them. Tambo came running foward and he and Kobayashi dropped sounding lines and yelled out depths. The number came ever smaller, then sudden bigger as they entered the main channel of the river. Lulu helped her sister reef the sail and together with the current this slowed them considerably and they swung alongside a low flat island. Tambo jumped for shore and pulled them in and around the back. In the fading light Lulu could see it was only maybe ten feet above the river at it's tallest. A thick stand of oaks and pines stood in the middle of the island. It was there that she and her Aunt took two tarps and plently of line to try to construct a shelter of some kind. Kobayashi and her father dragged the lifeboat off the tk, flipped it over, and propped it between two trees. Lulu and Aunt Māra drapped a tarp over the upturned hull and began tying the tarp down to the base of the trees around them. + +Her father shone the lattern on their work. "That should hold for a while anyway." -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..." +The tk man split a piece of young sapling wood from along the river and began to carve notches in it. He came over and fit the notches into the line and began to twist it, drawing the line tighter. -"Greer, the boy is with him." +"Clever." Her father nodded at him excitedly. -"There's nothing we can do." +The storm came slow, it seems to pace back and forth somewhere just offshore. Lulu wondered what was happening at their camp. It seemed not so much angry, as... Lulu wasn't sure. She and Birdie were talking about it when Kobayashi interrupted them. "The sea is never angry. What we see as anger is just the sea god reshaping the shore. It takes tremendous force to reshape the coastline. Think what effort it would take to move this island ten feet to the left. Storms are the only tool the sea has to move entire islands. It reshapes things with wind. It blows hard because it has much work to do and wants to do it in little time. There are two faces to the world, one is so slow and patient it's tough to see it work, you see? -I am going to tell tk sister's name" +Lulu considered this, but before she could answer he went on. -"There isn't time." +"Trickle a stream down a bank of sand and it will slowly cut deeper and deeper as it comes to rejoin the sea. Deeper and deeper, until eventually there is a canyon where once there was just a trickle. Everyone thinks that's the end of the story, when that water flows into the sea, but we know better yeah? There are rivers in the ocean, the animals ride them, sometimes we ride them. Water is always in motion, that is it's nature. It is never at rest." -Lulu's mother glared at him. +Her father and brother joined them. Tambo and Aunt Māra were building a small fire they hoped would burn down to coals they could keep until morning. The boat was half careened on its side at the rear of the island, as ready as it could possibly be. -"What good would it do Arabella? She'd worry and make herself sick and still not be able to do anything." +"We see the medium processes," continued Kobayashi. "The ones that move at our speed. We see the tides change every day, we see the moon wax and wane. We see the season turn. We see the winds change. We see only what moves at our speed. If we want to see the other things we have slow ourselves down. Or speed ourselves up. Or sometimes, like now, we just hang on and try to survive the ride." -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 tk boat name." +The watched as the last of the light faded. The Indian family joined them there on the island. Everyone shared a meal of dried fish and watched the lightning begin to light up the sky. The line of rain was visible in the flashes, inching toward them, relentless, slow, and mighty. -"Yes mama." +The storm came on so strong it seemed to suck everything toward it. The wind blew out to sea for a while, then sudden it switched and began to come back, like the storm had inhaled what the land had to offer and was now ready to speak it's own story into being. It spoke in rhythm and rhyme. Wind that once whistled in the long leaf pines and clattered through palm leaves now shrieked and growled, rising like music Lulu had heard once coming from a big house in London town. It rasped over the reeds with a blast that knocked them flat, pinning them down to a single note that was washed over and drown out by the oncoming waves. As it grew stronger it beat waves across the marsh and up the river in front of them, ripples and surges of water. Then came the rain. At first a pelting, like drums rolling through the night. Everyone retreated then to the shelter of the pines, under the boats and tarp. -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. +And then it opened up like something terrible that Lulu had never dreamed was possible. She had never known that such forces existed in the world. Everything seems to screech and wail as the storm tore at the land, working hard to rearrange, reshape, renew. Lulu, Birdie and Henri huddled with the others under the shelter of the boat, but it rocked and began to move too. Her father ducked outside and added more lines. The tk man, who had been carving more of his tightening sticks went with him and together they shored up the shelter as best they could. -They had stipped the hug and broken it down completely before the wind ever increased in speek, long before the hoizen turned black. +"That's the last time we walk out there without a line." said her father when he ducked back under the shelter. He started readying a line should he have to go out again. The flashes of lightning came so fast and frequent that it felt like the sky was just light, with flashes of darkness. She saw Henri sitting in Birdie's lap, both of them huddled next to Aunt Māra. Tambo and Kobayashi were playing some sort of game with sticks the Lulu did not understand, gathering them up, throwing them and then starting at the resulting scatter of sticks and nodding and grunting thoughtfully before gathering them all up again and starting over. It seemed very boring to Lulu and a strange thing to do in the middle of a storm. -It wasn't until the sun was setting that they say the line of clouds, so dark and far off they nearly blended with the sea below them. Her father ran up the dunes wiht the spyglass and studied the horizon. +Lulu knew if she went outside the wind would blow her away. She knew it would actually move her across the ground with more power and she had to resist it. It would shape her, it would put her wherever it wanted, she knew it and yet a part of her still longed to duck out under the canvas and feel it, feel her own helplessness in the face of the storm, measure herself against this great rearranging force, to feel as physically insignificant as she sometimes felt in her head. It was so big thing. She was so small a thing in the face of it. But she was sure she could outwit it somehow, could dodge it, could survive it using only what she had about her. It was a feeling at once of power and fear mingled together. -It came ashore as if angry, but no angy, what we see as rage is just the sea god reshaping. Ittakes tremndous foce to reshape the coastline Think what effort it would take to move this sandbar ten feet to the left. And the horricane is the seas way of moving entire islands, making cures in barrier islands to get into mangoves that haven't had a flushing of the sea in years. It reshapes, it blows hard because it has much work to do and wants to do it in little time. There are two faces to the world, one is so slow and patient it's tough to see it work. Tricle a stream down a bank of sand and it will soly cust deeper and deeper as it comes to rejoung the sea. Deerp and deeper until is reaches th sea. And everyone thinks that's the end of the sory but it's now. there are rivers in theoceans, the anmials rid them, the first follow tthem, water is always in motiion, that is it's fundamental quality it is never at rest. It is still the echo of the collision that formed the moon. +Then suddenly, when it seemed it could get no worse, it stopped. And eerie quiet calm descended upon them. The wind dropped to nothing more than a windy day at the beach. Her father, Tambo, and Kobayashi were out in an instant, the tk man said something to his family and went out with them. They secured the lines on the tarp, the lines on the boat. They moved branches and debris that was washing ashore of the little island. Anything that the second round might be able to hurl at them, they moved and cleared as best they could. -Hwo does the father have all these wide ranging views, because he has sailed, met people from around the world, ben eposed to believes beyond those he grew up with, shapped new ones, from those he started with, abandoned those that made no sense, kept those that ddid, tweaked them to fit whatever new information he might have gained. +Lulu and Birdie crawled out from under the tarp and looked around. The wind was steady, a stiff onshore breeze, but with gusts that would rip through suddenly, ferociously, a little reminder from the storm that it was not done yet. -The slow process happen around us so subtly we hardly notice them. We see the meium process, the ones that move at our speed. We see the tides change every day, twice a day. Once a day, ti depends, but it is regular, cyuling, like the moon, we see things at out seep. +The men were joking and laughing as they came back from securing the tk. Tambo and tk man were carrying a barrel of water. Everyone came out and drank in the darkness and calm. Lulu wasn't sure, but she thought it was probably past midnight by now. -The storm came on so strong it seemed to suck everything toward it. The wind blow out to see for a a while, then sudden it switched and began to come back like the storm had inhaled what the land had to offer and was no ready to speak. It spoke in rythm and rymme. Rising like music Lulu had heard once coming from a big house in London twon, It grew beating wvaves across the mrsh in front of them like drum tolling throught the night, it played the strees like a strong, beating its bowacrost the fronds of palms, between the neeldes of hjack pine, it rasped the reeds with a blast that nocked them flat, pinned them down to a single note that was washed over and drown out by the oncoming waves. And then everything seems to screch and wail in some kind of climax as the storm began its work of rearranging. Lulu, Birdie and Henri unddled with the mother under the shelter of the boat, but it tocked and began to move too. Her father ducked outside and added more line and went to check on Tamba and tk in their boat.when he returned they were with him. That's the last time anyone of foign to be able to walk out there without a line her father said ad the moved over to leave more room for Tabe and his family. +"How much longer will it last Papa?" She could see the whites of his eyes gleam in a flash of lightning. -Tk sister names was in the stern huddled up, her arms wrapped around Charles, rocking back and forth, sobby queitly and Lulu guessed, praying. Lulyu knew if she went outside the wind would blow her away. Literally move her across the ground with more power and she had to resist it. It would shape her, i would put her wherever she wanted, she knew it and yet a part of her still watned to duck out under the gunwale and Feel it, feel her own helplessness in the face of the storm, measure herself agains this great rearranging force, to feel physically as insignificant as she sometimes felt in her head. This thing was big. she was so small in the face of it, and she could outwit it, could dodge it, could surviv it using only what she had about here. It was a feeling at once of power and fear mingled together. +"I don't know my girl, maybe it'll be over by morning." -Even her father could not step out into it now. Even he would sue a line of for somereason her had to go out and then suddenly, when it seemed it could get no worse, it stopped. And eery quiet calm descended upon them. The wind dropped to noting more than a windy day at the beach. Her father was out in and instant securing lines, moving branches and debris that was washing ashore. +Tambo said something in tk, the tk man nodded. He knelt down by Lulu and looked at her face. It was so dark Lulu could feel his breath better than she could see him. He reached out in the darkness, she felt his rough hands on her shoulders. He began to sing in a soft voice. Lulu could not understand the words, but she understood the meaning. His own daughter came out and stood next to Lulu, holding her hand. -An aligaror appoaches the boat. The ancient eye starred at them her father picked up his gun and pointed it at the create, but did not fire. For gd sakes shoot it tk sister name. +The wind began to rise again, it felt like the pulse of the storm was quickening, building back to roar once more. The man's song finished. He squeezed Lulu's shoulder and she saw him smiling in the darkness. She crawled back under the boat with birdie and sat back down in the bow. -No. If I have too I will, biut righ now I don't have too. +Despite the roar of the storm and the pounding of the rain Lulu felt her eyes beginning to droop. She leaned against her aunt and closed her eyes. -The single eye regarded them. Lulu felt the fear wash over her like a storm sopped wave and she realized that though she was shivering from the wind and water that soaked, here, she felt a fot flash of fear was over her and she was swetting. She tapped her father's leg but could not find words. He stroked her hed and looked at her kindly, as if she were scared of the storm. Still she could not find the make her mouth form the words. finally in a whisper she said, "aligator" +She wasn't sure how long she'd been asleep but all at once she was awake, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. She couldn't see, she couldn't hear anything other than the rain drumming on the canvas and wood, but she could feel danger. It wasn't until the next flas of lightening that she understood. She saw the teeth first, whatever part of her brain was in charge of keeping her alive zeroed in on the immediate threat of teeth. Teeth that were far to bit and far too close. Above them a single eye regarded her. Lulu felt the fear wash over her like a storm sopped wave and she realized that though she was shivering from the wind and water that soaked her the hot flash of fear made her sweat. She kicked at her fathers leg, but could not find words. He leaned over and stroked her head and looked at her kindly, as if she were scared of the storm. Still she could not find the make her mouth form the words. Finally in a whisper she said, "alligator" -Her father had his postol out and pointing in the darkness so fast everyone jumped. What is Tamba screamed ove rthe whining howl of the saves. Her father pointed. The gator eased itself further in and but kept irs eye on all of them. +Her father had his pistol out and pointing in the darkness so fast everyone jumped. What is it Tamba screamed over the whining howl of the wind. Her father pointed the gun. The gator eased itself further in under the tarp and seemed to regard them. -As scared as she was Lulu could not help thinking that that it looked every bit as scared as she did. Excpe it had giant teeth. Then again she thought, her father had a cun. A bunch of creatures thrown together, all afraind of the wind and sea and water. Maybe this was how the storm wanted to mover her, maybe id di not want to blow her thourhg the pines so much as put her under a boat with a scared aligaotr. It contineued to stare as her, and it seemed to her, only her. She stared right back, the fear faded some. One can only be truly terrified for so long, one adjusts, terriffied becomes normal. Until more terror comes to up the ante somehow and it didn't +Despite her fear Lulu could not help thinking that that the alligator looked every bit as scared as she was. Except it had giant teeth with which to protect itself from fear. Then again she thought, her father had a gun. A bunch of creatures thrown together, all afraid of each other. Maybe this was how the storm wanted to move her, maybe it did not want to blow her though the pines so much as put her under a boat with a scared alligator. But why? What was she supposed to do? It continued to stare at her, and it seemed to stare only her, though she thought maybe she was imagining that. She stared right back anyway. The fear faded some. One can only be truly terrified for so long, one adjusts. Terror becomes normal if you experience it long enough, and it when it comes to terror you don't have to experience it long to reach long enough. It's how you survive battles, storms at sea, perhaps alligators. + +Instead of terror she began to feel uncomfortable. Why was it staring at her? Was it staring at her? She thought she might be losing her mind until she heard Tamba say, "It's watching her." -Her father answered just load enough to be heard over the storm, "She's edible size." +Her father answered just loud enough to be heard over the storm, "She's edible size." + +Lulu cocked her head. Are you trying to decide if you should eat me? She glanced around. What's wrong with the rest of them she thought. -"Maybe" said Tamba. "Maybe it's just scared and curious." +"Maybe" said Tamba. "Maybe it's just scared too and trying to decide if she's going to eat it." "You're feeling charitable." "You're the one who hasn't shot it." -"If I shoot it we'll all be deaf. We need our ears for the storm." +"If I shoot it we'll all be deaf and burned. And I'm not sure it'll kill it." + +Tamba nodded. "Maybe it will just go away." + +A particularly close flash of lightning made them all flinch and when they did the alligator flinched as well and it was then that Lulu noticed it was missing its other eye. Lulu cocked her head and stared at it's one eye again, but this time she saw it differently. Are you the same creature? Is that possible? You're bigger. But so am I. A year is a long time. Do you recognize me? Is that why you're staring at me? Are you trying to tell me something? + +The eye moved as she thought these questions. It focused back on her for a moment and then it lifted it's body up. Lulu saw her father raise the gun. "Wait!" she yelled. The alligator turned it's eye to her one last time and then it slipped out from under the tarp and disappeared into the night. + + -Tamba nodded, lulu could see the dglint of Tambas eye in the darkness as he nodded. They were all only eyes. The storm had sucked the light out of the evening. It was dark as early night and yet it could not have even been sunsut. it was impossible to know. --- @@ -1147,6 +1271,99 @@ What does he do, he helpos get the goods ashore and brings water out to the boat Tamba asks them their names, asks if they can sail. They buy someone that can and set them free. + +## Sails + +It was after breakfast, the first truly cold morning of the year, it would still be plenty warm by midday, but it was cold now in the mornings. Her father had come in from his morning swim and for the first time sat by the fire to warm himself. Birdie had been stirring leftover stew in the kettle, which she'd hung herself over the fire. She was the first up, after her father. She scooped out a bowl bowl stew and stepped out into the cold air. She sat on a stump and ate. The more she ate the hungrier she felt and before long went back inside for another bowl. "That's my girl," said her father, ladling another bowl for her. + +"You'll help with the kilns today. Kobayashi and I are going to Charlestown" + +Birdie nodded. "Yes papa." Lulu took the ladle from her and sleepily spooned some in her bowl. She followed Birdie outside. When they had finished eating, and Birdie was finally full they walked together down to the shore to wash their bowls in the surf. + +Birdie stopped at the shore. Lulu knelt and let the rushing water of the wave fill her bowl and pull the bit of fish at the bottom back out the sea. Birdie watched but she made no move to wash her own bowl. She stared out at the sea where she thought she saw something white on the horizon, something that might be a topsail coming into view. + +"Lu, what is that?" + +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 kilns. 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 horizon. + +"Topsail, moving northeast." He handed Birdie the glass and she climbed up the nearest dune to get a better look. Northeast 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 Charlestown. They've have seen sails well and clear when she rounded cape and turned to the north, headed for London or . The only boats that ever headed northeast without coming out of Charlestown were... she glanced over at her father. He was watching her, 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 north. 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. 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 joined at the hip. He clasped a huge hand on her shoulder and pulled her tight against his leg 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. + +"Hey." + +He stared for a while. "Indeed she is." He put the glass down and frowned. "Lulu, Birdie, take the pirogue, fetch Tamba." + +Lulu frowned, "where is he?" + +Her father smiled, "Why he's at Kadiatu's of course." + +"Why is he at Kadiatu's?" Birdie wanted to know. + +"Never mind that, just go get him." Her father ducked into their hut and Birdie heard him waking Kobayashi. + +Lulu shrugged. "Let's go." + +They ran through the woods to the edge of the marsh where they kept the pirogue. They took turns padding up the river. + +Tamba was about her fathers age Birdie guessed, perhaps a few years older, the hair at his temples was whiter than her father's anyway. Tamba had no beard so it was hard to say what color it might have been, though Birdie figured it would be black like her father's. Tamba did not often stay with then at the beach. He spent the winters at a Gullah village deeper in the woods, ten minutes further up the river and then a good walk from the shore. We are not water people he told Birdie when she asked him why they did not live near the beach where it was cooler. We come from jungles hotter than this, he said, smiling. This English was stiff around the edges, acquired from many sources, including her father, who had acquired his from many different people. Birdie liked hearing Tamba tell stories though because his voice and the way he pronounced word made English sound more beautiful, more thoughtful, more important than when other people talked. + +Her father nodded when she told him this once. "Tamba is like us. He is the Alban of his place. Highlanders always speak less. We put more thought into what we are going to say." + +Birdie wasn't so sure any of them would qualify as highlanders, living as they did, so low, near to the sea. Even Tamba, though he claimed not to be water people, lived by and survived mainly from the water that was ever-present around all of them. + +Tamba's skin was near black. Light seemed to disappear when it landed on him. She noticed that he used this to his advantage, sometimes to disappear into shadow, sometimes by wearing a white shirt that provided such a contrast he was impossible not to see, a shadow fleshed out into the light. She noticed too that he used clothes in a way that most people did not, they were not simply things that hung over his frame to keep the sun off, they were tools that helped him navigate the world. + +And Birdie knew 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. + +"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." + +Her father smiled at her. "A wonderful idea my darling freewoman, 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 more softly, "and gods it *would* be satisfying, but that is not our path on this turn." + +Birdie pushed the canoe up onto the shore and used her pole to vault out of the stern of the boat, over the water, to land on the shore. She dragged the boat up and tied it off to a branch hanging down from the sprawling oak that marked the landing that led to Kadiatu's family's land. She and Lulu followed the well worn path through the trees. Their house was on stilts made of cypress, thatched like every house in the area, but better and more substantially made. Kadiatu and her family were not travelers. They did not move camps like Birdie's family. Their camp had a more permanent feel to it. There was a privy made of leftover oak boards her father and Tamba had split last year to repair the shelving in the hold of the tk. Beyond the clearing the house sat in was a larger clearing where Kadiatu's grandmother grew corn and beans, plants she had received as gifts from the few remaining Edistow that lived on the island. + + + + + + +## 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 + + + + + +# Spring + +## Into Town + - The take Aunt Māra to Charlestown, she no longer want to live on the island + +## Something +## Sails + - McPhail arrives + # Glossary **Bow**: The front of a boat @@ -1160,3 +1377,4 @@ Tamba asks them their names, asks if they can sail. They buy someone that can an **Northerly wind**: a wind blowing from the north to the south. **Lateen rigged**: One of the earliest triangular sail designs, this rig allows the tk to sail much closer to the wind (35 degrees to the wind with a skilled captain) than a square rigged ship of the line, which could only manage something like 50. **Caravel**: The ship that, for better or worse, brought Europe to the rest of the world. The Portuguese developed the Caravel off a fishing boat design in roughly 1451. It proved so successful that it dominated the spice trade for nearly 100 years, though it had a good bit of competition from the Carrack, which was square rigged in the fore and main, but still Lateen rigged on the Mizzen. The Carrack was somewhat stabler in heavy seas and could carry larger loads. +**Hekas, hekas! Este bebeloi!**: The exorcism that opened the Eleusinian Mysteries, this phrase drives away anything not spiritual. It is said to mean "far, far be removed the profane." |