Kicking hard, I swam to Mercy.
“You ought not provoke him, Frannie,” she said as I reached her. “You can’t say things like that no more.”
Mercy was thirteen—two years younger than me, but ten years smarter. I’d waited years for a friend in West End. When I’d finally gotten one, I’d gotten the best one.
“I just did and here I am, still breathing.” She didn’t laugh, so I said, “He won’t remember. He finished a whole bottle of kill-devil on the way here.”
“What if he does remember?” Our knees bumped as we treaded water. “You’re his daughter now, Frannie. His alone.”
My throat cinched up like a belt. For weeks I’d been avoiding that very truth, hiding in my memories of Mama instead, but Mercy was right. Sewel loved to torment me, but when I’d lost my patience before, Mama had been there to stand between us. Without her, I had no idea how I’d survive. “Don’t worry, Mercy. I en’t afraid of that birdbrain,” I said, sinking my voice to a drawl, like Sewel’s.
Her eyes slid to him. “Birds are smarter than that man. If he was a bird, he’d fly backward.”
I grinned. “Probably barking, too.”
We clasped our hands together and drew three deep breaths. Then we let go and dove.
I kicked down, plunging fathom by fathom, the hush of the sea seeping into my mind and my muscles. By the time I touched the slippery wood ribs of the Valparaíso, the boats were just blurry shadows on the surface. With the pestering drag of the tide, I knew I wouldn’t have much time for searching, but there was no use moaning about it. I ran my hand along the hull, kicking to the seabed; then I rummaged through the sand for whatever felt solid, and pushed off.
I knew as I kicked up I had nothing good. Bits of coral and shells, only. Most of the Valparaíso’s treasures were long gone, but a big storm like this might uncover overlooked finds, like shoe buckles or spoons or even coins. Tesoros del tiempo, Mama had called them. Treasures brought by time.
“Well?” Sewel said as I broke the surface. He’d moved over to Mr. Baines’s boat, and they were sharing a fresh bottle.
“Nothing, sir.” I held up my empty hands to show him, then dove before he could holler at me.
A few more searches turned up a rusted hammer, a few nails. Everything slick with the grit and spit of the sea. Nothing worth an egg.
I moved on and began to search the ship itself, swimming through its hatches and twisting through the hold as I peered into silty crates and reached inside murky hogsheads. Soon my mind opened and spun into daydreams, turning the nail that grabbed at my shirttails into a cutpurse, the eel peering from inside a barrel into a demon. Every inch of this ship had told me a story at one time or another, from the ballast bricks, which had surely once made castles, to the rope tied to the prow, which drifted like a string in search of its missing kite.
Mama used to say that some daydreamers built castles in the sky, but I built my castillos en el mar. I knew of no better place to open my mind than fathoms below.
After an hour or so, Mercy and I met behind her papa’s boat. My eyes burned from the salt and my legs and arms felt heavy as bricks.
“I found plenty of sand.” I waited for her to say she’d found plenty of salt water. Mercy and I never found nothing.
“We have to get out, Frannie. Look.”
I blinked my pickled eyes and followed her gaze to the black clouds. “You think it’s a hurricane?”
“Not the storm. Look.” She pointed just beyond the Valparaíso, where the sea’s surface rippled.
My breath caught as a great fin sliced up.
Shark. Biggest one I’d ever seen. Long as the wherry and near as wide.
We’d swum near sharks plenty of times, but never one this excited, pushing so high at times I could see its gills.
“Mercy, come on,” Moses said, reaching down to help her into the boat.
I didn’t waste a second; I swam for the wherry, fear turning me into an arrow. In seconds, I reached it and heaved myself aboard, landing with a thud.
Sewel snored away like a beast, his big body slumped into the curve of the wherry’s stern. Trembling with tiredness and fear, I hauled up the anchor and set it inside the well. The shark still circled nearby, and every rumble of thunder shook the air in my lungs. I grabbed the lines to raise the sail, more than ready to get home.
“Did I say it was time to leave?”
My every muscle tensed. I let go of the line and turned. “No, sir.”
Sewel pulled out of his slump. “Sit.”
I found myself sinking onto the thwart and grabbing the wood beneath me to keep steady.
He picked his hat up from the well where it’d fallen, and took his time brushing the water and sand away before setting it back on his head. “It’s past time we discuss how things are gonna be now, with your mama gone.” He rubbed his chin and stared at me, heedless of the lightning bolts slicing across sky. “You are an oddity, Francisca,” he said. “An aberration. You have no fortune, nor any beauty. You have no gentleness in your heart, nor a wisp of feminine softness. What you do have is a terrible temper and an odious lack of refinement. Added to the disgrace of having a fallen woman for a mother, you got no chance of ever luring an upright man to take you for a wife. So I have decided that I will save you. I will make the sacrifice, in your mama’s memory, and take you as mine. En’t nothing wrong with it, as we en’t blood, and I’m nearer in age to you than I was to her, so…” He lifted his shoulders. “En’t nothing wrong nor unnatural with it.”
A warm sickness pushed into my throat and I felt myself falling back. Plunging into a cloud of silence. There was no logic, no sense to his words, but I’d expected this. I’d seen this coming. For months, since Mama had taken to bed, I’d seen hints in his eyes and how they followed me. I’d felt it in his hands, which had found me at any excuse. I’d been dreading this—but I still felt shock. I still couldn’t understand it.
“Well? En’t you got nothing to say?”
“Yes, sir. I do,” I heard myself answer. “I will never be your wife, Sewel. Never.”
“Hmm.” He nodded slowly. Then his gaze slid over to the shark and the air rushed out of my lungs.
Sewel reached into the bait box for his jackknife. He opened it and looked real slowly at one side of the blade, then turned to the other, pondering that one, the branded M shining on his thumb all the while. “You’re going back in, Frannie—that en’t the question,” he said, his voice sweeter sounding than I’d ever heard it. “You brang it upon yourself with your defiance. The only question is whether you want to be bleedin’ when you do or not.”