PROLOGUE
Day Twelve
Day Twelve
Calm waters, gray clouds, repairs to bowsprit,
Rolo paused, the pen dripping ink onto the page. Father was supposed to do the ship’s log, not him. What was he supposed to say? Should he write how Cook Pazya burnt a batch of biscuit and made the crew anxious about rations? Or how Laicee told him she hated him for ripping her away from her life at home? No. Ship’s logs were for. . .well, not that.
Rolo cleaned off the quill pen, capped the inkwell and closed the leather-bound logbook. He moved slowly, his muscles sore, his head pounding in dehydration. He rubbed at his forehead, leaning his elbows on the desktop. There was more work to do. There was always more work aboard a ship. He pulled the bundle of maps from the second drawer and spread them out before him, squinting at the star charts and Father’s rough sketch of the currents and the thin black line that represented the shoreline of Nova Terre, the New Land. Father knew exactly how to read these charts, but all Rolo could do was guess. Son of the famous Captain Willik, and all Rolo could do was pretend.
According to the maps, the goodship Maiden’s Progress would lay anchor on Day Forty-six, making them about a quarter of the way there. It took Captain Willik forty days to make the crossing, forty long days of seasickness, fear and a dozen colorful ways of dying. Rolo charted with a finger the line from Cape Russt, his hometown, to a promontory sticking out from the mainland. So very far away.
Four light taps on his cabin door roused him from the torture of charting. “Come in,” he called, forgetting that it might be someone he didn’t want to come in. He groaned his mistake and bundled the maps away.
The door creaked open quickly and there stood Laicee, looking like a pauper in her filthy cotton dress. Her lovely red hair was soaked and her feet were bare. Rolo barely believed that two weeks ago he had left Cape Russt with a well-dressed young lady. She watched Rolo with angry gray eyes. Minutes passed and neither brother nor sister moved. Then Laicee shook her hair back proudly. “Explain yourself.”
Rolo knew that if he was the perfect brother he would enfold her in his loving arms and tell her he was sorry. But a hug was too awkward. He barely knew her. And did she even want that intimacy? No. He went for formal. “Laicee, I took you on this ship to protect you. Things at home are more dangerous right now than you could possible imagine and Mother and I agreed that we had to do what was best for you. It was a grown-up thing.”
Laicee’s temper exploded. “I am a grown-up, Rolo! I know about the Aju war, and about Uncle Pieter being an Aju spy and all the other stuff. I’m not just your kid sister, you can’t control me.” She blew herself out and stood there huffing and looking fierce.
Rolo began to panic. Laicee was just a girl, she had no place knowing about the Aju war. “Come on, Laice, I was only doing what I thought was right. It was in your best interest.”
She threw up her arms, disturbing the filthy dress. “I hate that phrase! My best interests, phooey. I’m fourteen years old, not a child anymore. Did you know that two weeks before we left home I masqueraded as a boy and enlisted in the fight against Aju? Huh, did you know that? I was supposed to run away to the war, not be kid-napped by my brother.” She began to cry, hiding her tears with scratching her forehead. And then those small tears turned to great sobs of misery, shaking her small, frail body.
Rolo stood, walked around the edge of his desk and stood beside her, awkwardly trying to comfort her. Hand on the shoulder? Too intimate. Caress her hair? Too patronizing. Finally Laicee punched his chest and ran out, leaving him to nurse his injury and ponder the female mind.
Laicee’s Revenge
As the only women aboard the Maiden’s Progress, Laicee and Cook Pazya shared a cabin at the stern of the ship, beneath the wheel. Pazya was in her thirties, a frazzled, easily distracted woman who kept a supply of licorice hidden beneath the floorboards. Every night, after all of their duties were completed, they sat on Pazya’s bunk and shared the treat. After a long day of hard work and harder biscuits, the soft, moist candy was the perfect remedy.
“How’d it go with Captain Rolo?” Asked Pazya.. She was leaning against the wooden wall, studying her licorice lazily.
“I can’t believe I’m related to someone so. . .bad. He’s bad at everything. I can’t think of one single thing he’s good at. Except art. But that doesn’t count, at least not on a ship.”
Pazya nodded and elbowed Laicee. “Men are idiots, love. Sooner you learn that, the happier you’ll be. You gonna eat that licorice or are you waitin’ for it to sprout legs and walk away?”
“Think it can do that?”
Pazya laughed, a rough, scratchy sound that gave away her years of smoking those pipes the lower classes so loved. She quieted and pointed a finger at Laicee. “Listen, honey. We both know Captain Rolo hasn’t got the brains to be scrub boy, let alone captain. So, uh. . .you think you can handle being captain?”
Laicee’s heart jumped and her breathing quickened. She stopped mid-chew. “Are you talking mutiny?”
“Yes ma’am. The crew was loyal to your father Captain Willik, and they’re only barely loyal to your brother. You’ve got the stuff, believe me. I see so much of Willik in you.”
Tears formed in Laicee’s eyes and she rubbed at them a little. “Paz, I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“Have you seen my apron?”
Mutiny
Rolo lay down to bed late that night and his mind was too busy for sleep. In his head he replayed over and over his argument with Laicee, each time finding a different way it could have gone. Which led him to his own failure as a brother and his amazing lack of tact. With his finger he traced his name into the boards that made the wall. Rolo. What a waste of space.
He kept thinking back to his entry in the log book, wondering why he bothered. No future civilization would care whether his ship was lost at sea, or if the weather was cloudy. It seemed like no one had even cared that he was mounting an expedition, at his dead father’s request, into the unknown land known as Terra Nova. No one cared that this might be the future of humanity, this long, arduous trip into the north.
The cabin door crashed open and Laicee came into view, her dark shape barely visible in the darkness. She wore not the grimy old dress he had seen her in earlier but the gown she wore as the Maiden’s Progress sailed away from Cape Russt. Her hair was brushed and neat, pinned up in the elegant style of the times and she wore small white slippers soaked from walking across the deck. Rolo remembered the old Laicee: excited, stubborn, the center of attention for many of the young men in the city. Even Rolo’s friends, who were seventeen like him and far more mature than frivolous Laicee, were attracted to her. But this Laicee, now, was more criminal than lady. She held in her hand a glowing fire poker and in her eye was a look of hot, boiling hatred.
Rolo stumbled out of his blankets and cowered against the wall, his fists below his chin. “Laicee, uh, whatever you’re thinking, violence isn’t the answer.”
The fierce little girl flounced into the room, holding the poker out in front of her. “Vuelo said you lost your fire poker. I brought you mine.” She poked at the logs in Rolo’s fire, her eyes on him. She pulled the poker from the fire and tossed it from hand to hand. “Who put you in charge of the ship?”
What was she up to? “Father,” Rolo said slowly, his mind cataloguing all the possible things she could be doing. “Why are you holding a fire iron?"
“Why did Father put you in charge, knowing full well that you were happiest with your art apprenticeship?”
“Because I’m the oldest. Because a girl’s place is in the home, not captaining a ship. Because. . . yeah.” He couldn’t think of any other reasons, but he knew he was right all the same.
Laicee advanced slowly, majestically, her lovely blue gown swirling about her legs. “My turn to talk. Don’t say anything. Hey Rolo, did you know there’s a movement in Leyvan to give women the right to live on their own? Not with parents or husbands, just alone. Think of it. You men would finally have to admit that you don’t control us. Not only that, but you’ll have to admit that we are so much stronger than you. Won’t that feel exactly like a punch in the stomach for sexists like you?”
Rolo shifted uncomfortably. “What is this?”He inched towards his own fireplace and the fire iron beside it.
Laicee smiled, white teeth glistening, eyes alight. “This? This, my dear brother, is mutiny.”[pre]
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This ends up being a very different story than what comes across in the prologue, but this is what I have typed up to far. The rest is hand-written in a ratty old notebook at the moment, so. . .yep. Pretty much.
