Secondhand Charm

  I might have only moments to spare before the venom took hold, but I couldn’t bring myself to cut the man further, nor to suck his blood into my mouth.

  It wouldn’t work anyway, I thought. How could it? But who was I to argue with Father’s books? Then again, even the books admitted that the method rarely worked.

  Luck charm, snakebite charm, both of you, help me now.

  The sailor arrived with a blanket and cloths. The deck pitched underneath my knees.

  “Sir,” I said, “please lie flat on your back.” This was what came to my mind, and I seized upon it, grateful for any idea at all. Was half of medicine seeming confident that you knew what to do? If the patients believed you could help, could that save their lives? Pray heaven it was so!

  The monkey man was too frightened to protest. His chest rose and fell rapidly, but not, I thought, with actual difficulty breathing. Just with fright.

  I placed my hands on his ribs. “Sir,” I said, “listen to me. You must remain calm.”

  Still he panted like a horse just off a run.

  “Slow your breathing. Lie very still. It could make all the difference.”

  His face, now pale, trembled. I pushed back his sleeves, held his wounded arm high, and began cinching his arm just below the elbow with the strips. Not too tightly, but enough to discourage fluids from moving more through the flesh.

  There we remained with his hand held high. The worst part was waiting. What would happen to his hand? His eyes? His heart, his breath? I tested him every few minutes to see if he could hear, see, or feel through both sides of his body, and if the injured hand still had sensation.

  We waited. The moon was only a dim glow now behind the thick clouds, while the angry wind pushed us closer and closer to Chalcedon.

  Oh, let me not see two victims die today. One was far more than enough.

  I reached and took off my snakebite charm, draped it over the monkey trainer’s head, and settled the strange charm under his collar. The man’s watchful eyes never left my face. Minutes crawled, but every minute in which nothing changed gave me new hope.

  “You’re a healer, you are,” a blond sailor said, crouching beside me and watching me with wonder. “I’ve heard of women like you. From the islands.”

  Wind was now whistling through the sails. Massing clouds had swallowed all the stars, and the cold was becoming intense.

  “Can someone bring this man another blanket?” I said. Then, to the sailor, “I’m not from any island. This is the first I’ve laid eyes on the ocean. But I hope you’re right about the healing.”

  “Those island women,” a shorter sailor said, “they’re not healers. And she don’t look anything like them. They’re snake charmers.” He produced a wool blanket, which he dropped onto my patient’s chest.

  “Snake charmers?” I said. “They’re from desert countries. Little men with flutes.”

  “There’s them, too,” the man conceded, “with the cobras. I seen ’em in Zanzibar. But the island women, they’ve got snakes following ’em anywheres. Serpents for pets. Pity the poor fool that comes up against one of them.”

  “Why?”

  It was the first thing the monkey trainer had said since his bite, and I was glad of it. If something other than his own plight interested him, he must be calming down. Perhaps he would be all right.

  “Put a spell on you, they do,” the sailor said, gesturing widely, his eyes dramatic. “Man can’t hardly resist the snake women, with their long, black hair. Go chasing the world over if one of ’em asks you to. Yer a slave for life to her wicked charms.”

  “I hear they’re beautiful,” the blond sailor said. “Like mermaids.” He held his wrists in front of his chest, as if waiting to be shackled. “I don’t mind snakes. Sign me up for slavery!”

  The short one cuffed him cheerfully. “Yer a fool. Always said so. They’ll own yer soul!”

  “Better one of them than the devil!”

  I checked my patient’s wrist again. The skin was soft, not taut with swelling, and the color seemed healthy.

  “Can you feel it if I press here?” I touched different points along his hand, fingers, and arm, and his sensation was still strong. “Too soon to be certain, but it looks like you may not suffer any ill effects from this bite.”

  He nodded, his face expressionless.

  “A thank you for the pretty lady wouldn’t be amiss.” The blond sailor kicked his boot.

  “Thank you.” A more dispassionate thanks I couldn’t imagine.

  There was a loud crack as the sail nearest us flapped, looking likely to burst its knots. The wind no longer nudged us north, but blasted straight from the west. I pitched to one side as The White Dragon listed sharply toward shore. Spray hit my face and doused some of the lanterns. Bells began ringing, and the captain and Freddie began shouting orders to the crew. The sailors near me didn’t wait to be called twice, but sprang into action, taking straight to the riggings.

  Aidan crouched beside me and hoisted me up by one arm. “Evie, come this way.”

  My patient rose and ran off. I staggered after Aidan.

  The wind lashed furiously. People fell and objects slid as the ship lolled back and forth in the waves. Rain began pelting the deck, making it impossible to see.

  Aidan led me to the rearmost mast of the tall galleon. He wrapped my arms around it tightly. Then, standing directly behind me, he enfolded me in his tight embrace of the stout mast.

  “Whatever happens,” he shouted over the gale, “don’t let go!”

  I could barely breathe, trapped between the pine mast and Aidan’s ribs. He rested his chin on my head. It almost seemed he wanted to enfold and crush me, like a constrictor snake.

  Snake. I wondered how the sand viper felt. Poor, frightened creature.

  “Wind’s blowing us toward the shore,” Aidan shouted. “We’ll be dashed against the rocks. But if we’re lucky, there’s a chance we might make it to the shallow water.”

  Lucky. No gypsy charm could bend nature that far.

  The ship rocked drunkenly, wave after wave soaking us. Neither one of us could swim.

  We were going to die.

  My ears were full of the groaning ship, the screaming passengers, the shouting sailors, the roaring winds. Yet a strange quiet fell over me. The university, and everything I’d ever planned, faded like a chimera, and the past, my blessed past, filled my view. Sister Claire. Priscilla. Widow Moreau. And one, dearest of all.

  “Aidan,” I cried, worming my head free enough to be seen and heard. “If you make it safe to shore”—I took a deep breath, for the words were bitter—“and I don’t, please, tell Grandfather how much I love him.”

  Aidan let go of his grip around the mast and turned to face me, lifting my chin. His hair was plastered to his head, his face streaked with rain.

  “Evie,” he said, “if either of us makes it to shore, or if we don’t … ”

  I never heard the end of his sentence.

  He bent and kissed me.

  Chapter 17

  If someone had asked me, I would not have believed anything could remove me from the terror of a ship in a storm at night—from screaming passengers and shouting sailors and the roar of angry waves against the ship’s hull. I would have been wrong.

  It was an awkward thing, our necks twisted, our faces scraping against the mast, the driving rain covering the dark world.

  Aidan?

  Me?

  Aidan, all my life, right there, next door, and now, here, like this?

  Of course. Of course, Aidan. And now is all we’ve got.

  He stopped and rested his forehead against mine, his eyes closed, as if he didn’t dare look. Then the ship pitched again, and he resumed his grip around me and the mast.

  I squirmed around to face him fully, probably driving splinters in my cheeks as I did so, and kissed him back. I felt his sharp intake of breath. He let go of the mast and wrapped his arms around me.

  So soft, so sweet, so surpris
ing, as if all the stars in the night sky were bursting out from inside me. How could I have known?

  Aidan. And me.

  What are you doing, Evelyn Pomeroy? said a small, bookish schoolgirl voice in my head.

  Dying, I told it. Go away.

  Then inexperience made me nervous. How does one stop doing this? I wondered, and finally concluded, by stopping. I closed my eyes and tucked my head down, suddenly shy. Aidan laughed softly, which I felt more than heard, and he squeezed the mast until I thought I’d pop.

  And still the storm raged on.

  Then the mast shuddered horribly. Its mainsail ripped, and the wood of the mast screamed as it snapped like a dry twig only a few yards above our heads.

  There was a horrible jolt. The whole ship crunched. Its pitching and rolling stopped.

  “She’s foundered on the rocks!” a voice yelled. “She’s takin’ on water!”

  Whatever jag of rock had snared its hull seemed to want to hold on, despite the seaward waves that lashed its side, soaking us with salt water. No longer did nature’s forces seem impersonal. It was a contest between sea and stone, and the sea grew furious at the rock’s rebuff. Higher and higher the waves mounted, as each failed wave doubled back and rejoined the rest.

  When the last wave came, somehow I sensed its approach. Or perhaps it was the silence that fell over the shouting crew as that last wall of water rose up.

  The wave flung The White Dragon off its perch and toppled it into the sea like a cat batting a mouse through the air with its paw. I felt myself rise, still holding the mast, still clasped in Aidan’s grip, as we all turned a tumbler’s somersault in the air, then landed in the sea.

  Chapter 18

  What happened next was all so fast, yet when told, words will stall the speed, the rush, the fear.

  The cold was astonishing, and still more its daggers of sharp, relentless pain. There was no lessening of the cold, nor the fear that my heart would rupture from the shock of it.

  My ears filled with a low, vast, steady thrum, chasing away the chaotic din of the wind and the creaking ship.

  My mouth and nose filled with water.

  Aidan still clung to me.

  Salt water stung my eyes, yet I forced them open. There was nothing to see but blackness, but I had to try and see.

  My lungs burned. Air! Would there ever again be air?

  The stump of mast to which we clung stayed rooted underwater. If we didn’t let go, we’d drown. Before I could do anything, though, the mast snapped off the ship and began moving through the water. I felt hope while Aidan still held on.

  Then the backswell knocked the mast hard against the bulk of the ship. Aidan’s grip around me relaxed, and before I could seize his arm, he was swept away from me in the water.

  I bobbed to the surface, still clutching the mast, and gasped in a breath. Then I let go of the mast and plunged toward the direction I thought Aidan might have gone.

  Too late I realized how foolish that was. The last fool mistake I would ever make.

  But so be it. I would make the same choice again.

  I flailed through the water, my mouth and lungs again filling. Thrash as I might, I couldn’t bring my head above the surface. Whenever I thought I had, another wave broke over me, plunging me under.

  There was no sign of Aidan. In that dark, there wouldn’t be.

  Still the cold crept through every tissue in my body, claiming my hands, my feet, until I could no longer feel their pain, until they almost felt warm. Let go, I thought. Stop fighting, and slide down into the warmth and quiet at the bottom of the sea.

  Aidan is there. Let go.

  Down, down the water pulled me, and the less I fought, the quieter all became.

  Then another voice spoke in my mind.

  I’m coming!

  I turned in the dark water, as if I might find the thing, the voice, but all was black.

  I’m coming, oh, I’m coming, coming as fast as I can. Oh, it’s you, truly you. I’m coming! I’ve found you!

  The voice, though not audible, grew stronger, more near, until something wreathed itself around me, something long and powerful, like a supple tree trunk, and rushed me to the surface, my body succumbing like a cloth doll.

  I gulped in a mouthful of sweet rainy air and opened my eyes. I lay like a child in a hammock on the surface of the frothing water, supported by this moving, living cradle. I lifted my head to try to get a glimpse, and saw nothing except a darting glow in the water beneath me.

  Coils of this living, glowing rope surrounded me and skimmed me over the water.

  It was a serpent. A mighty serpent, half as long as the ship itself. And it had me captive.

  I ought to faint, I ought to scream, I ought to panic. These were the words in my head. But something in me was beyond panic, beyond fear, in a quieter state. I wondered if it might possibly be death.

  I wished I hadn’t parted with my snakebite charm.

  Did this creature wish to hurt me? It had seemed pleased to find me. Was that only because I was its favorite meal?

  Must get you to shore before you chill, before you choke. It is you, I knew it, I smelled it. Oh, why, why, why have you made me wait so long? The others, they’ve been laughing at me!

  It spoke to me in my mind. I could hear no words, and yet I could feel its words as well as if I did hear them. Better, for I could have heard little in that storm.

  “You seem to know me,” I said aloud. Now I was speaking to my own delusions! “What are you?”

  Later, later. Must get you dry and warm.

  I took some small courage at these words and dared to ask what now concerned me most.

  “Do you also know the one I came with?” A new thought struck me. “Is … one of your kind helping him too?”

  There was a slight tremor of distaste, as if Aidan were a dish I’d served to a guest too polite to say it was spoiled.

  I know which one he is. I smelled him too.

  And suddenly we were on the beach. My fingers closed around fistfuls of sopping sand. The creature backed away, and I flung myself over onto my hands and knees, my whole body shaking with cold and gratitude.

  Up from the water rose the creature, glorious and strange. I gazed upward as it ascended, almost hovering over me. Though it had saved me, still, I shrank back in fear.

  Its head was flat and angled at the edges like the cut emerald on a priest’s ring. Its snout was long and blunt, with whiskers like a catfish, and nostrils that twitched like an anxious horse. Silver blue skin plated with large scales gleamed in the darkness, and jewel green eyes blinked at me.

  A sea serpent.

  “Please,” I said in a voice I barely recognized, “please find my friend and help him.”

  Now we’re together, you and I. There’s nothing else we need.

  Faster than thought, its answers appeared in my mind. An even more horrible thought struck me. “Did you cause this storm?”

  The serpent watched me, blinking, as though this question was not something it knew how to answer.

  “Can you stop the storm?”

  It will die down soon. Now that we’ve found each other. If it were possible, the great mouth seemed to smile. Don’t be frightened. I will always protect you from storms.

  I digested these words. “So you did cause the storm? People are dying!”

  The beast reared its great head back as if confused.

  I do not create storms, it said. But for you and I to be so long apart? It isn’t natural. The ocean abhors it.

  This made no sense.

  Sixteen years I’ve waited for you, Mistress. Its eyes blinked with sadness and reproach. They have called me abandoned. But I always believed I would find you.

  It stretched its long neck down toward me and butted my shoulder, my chin, gently with its head. It caressed me, nuzzling against me with its horned face. Instinctively I recoiled and immediately felt its hurt. So I stopped. I reached a hand toward it.

  And halt
ed. This gigantic monster, this behemoth, could devour me in one gulp! And I was having a conversation with it? If I had any strength, I would run. And yet, something in those eyes constrained me, compelled me to stay.

  “Please,” I said again. “My friend is dying. Already he may be gone. Please, bring my friend to me.”

  It lowered its head, for all the world like he was bowing. Mistress, it said, though its mouth didn’t seem to move, they are only food. What do you want with them?

  “Food!” I cried, aghast. “What do you mean, they’re only food?”

  Those others. In the water. They’re not like you.

  “Those others in the water,” I cried, crawling closer to dry land, “are every bit like me. You must help them all, if you have any love for me. First, bring me my friend. And if there are others like you that can help, call to them!”

  The great serpent hesitated. You will stay, won’t you?

  “I won’t leave this beach.”

  It turned its great head back toward the sea and leaped under the surface, the rest of its length rippling after, flashing before disappearing from view.

  The next moments were some of the worst I ever spent. I was wet, with freezing winds buffeting me. I wanted badly to lie down, even if the waves did wash the sand away and take me with it. Walk, I told myself. Walk and warm your body. But needles of pain shot through every muscle. I was alive, but how many were dead? I fell forward into the sand, striking my knee on a rock, and lay there crying.

  A movement caught my eye, and I looked to see a human form crawling up out of the waves. It wasn’t Aidan. One of the lucky sailors, it seemed, who knew how to swim, though even an adept swimmer would likely have succumbed to the waves and rocks.

  He reached a pebbly place and collapsed, facedown, heaving up water. I went toward him but stopped, seeing another form wash ashore. A more urgent case. It was a passenger. I rolled him onto his front. A spume of water issued from his mouth and he began to breathe.

  It was still too dark to see much, but I stumbled about, treading upon ship debris and bodies. Miracle upon miracle, every body I encountered was alive. Barely. But alive.