Out of Place

  If...while inside my tiny little living quarters, I could get the net off and the shadow-coat on; and if...one of the fur-people came over to check on me; and if...when he didn’t see me, because I was wearing the shadow-coat, he untied the crate and lifted it up to look; then...all I had to do was walk away. All they would notice would be the splash or maybe the trail of small fish that I would undoubtedly leave in my wake.

  I was just pushing aside the last bits of net and feeling very proud of my plan, not to mention impressed by my amazing flexibility, when I looked up and saw two eyes peering down at me.

  “Oh no,” I thought, suddenly feeling groggy, even while our eyes were locked together. I haven’t got my coat on yet. Who knows when they’ll decide to check up on me again? He kept staring at me and did something funny with his eyes. I had to go to sleep. I just had to. I curled up on top of the net and fell instantly asleep.

  The tooth-grinding screech of the winch woke me up. I was stiff, salty and surrounded by dead fish. The smell was not good.

  From the cracks in my crate I could see that we were pulled alongside a small ship. It was morning, or rather the beginnings of day, more gray than black, with a few stars still in the sky. Next to me, half tucked under me, was my sampo.

  Those strange people must have seen it floating in the water and pulled it out for me, I thought, thinking kind thoughts about them. I couldn’t see anyone, but I could hear voices, so they must be awake.

  I was so hungry that even the smell of dead fish couldn’t keep me from my breakfast. I took a banana and a bread and jelly sandwich out of my sampo and tried not to breathe in too deeply while I ate. Meanwhile, the ship began pulling away from our boat and by the time I finished eating, it was gone.

  By now, I had to pee really bad. Therefore, it was time for plan B. Speed things up. Not without some difficulty, since I didn’t dare uncross my legs, I got Poppy’s shadow-coat out of my right wing pocket. As I twisted myself around to put it on, I saw through the cracks in my smelly new home, a bunch of scruffy looking seagulls fly up and away from the boat. I counted four.

  That was when I realized that the voices I thought I had heard while I was eating weren’t voices at all, but the noisy bickering of the seagulls and that with their departure, the boat was now quiet. The fur-people must have gone back to sleep.

  As soon as I finished putting on the shadow-coat I started calling for attention--a soft “Hey” at first and then a lot of screaming and hollering when no one answered.

  “Hey, wake up everybody, I have to go to the bathroom!”

  No one came.

  I needed action and I needed it now. Taking a small hand saw out of my sampo, I used it to make one of the cracks in the crate large enough to get my arm through. After that, it was no problem to cut through one of the ropes holding down the crate. One rope was enough. I pushed and the box came loose enough for me to tip over.

  Taking the three short steps down to the cabin in one flying leap, I found the toilet and used it. In the process, I discovered that the boat was not only empty, it was really empty. There was nothing left to show that anyone had ever been on this boat. No mysterious but somehow revealing message on a discarded scrap of paper, no half eaten food, in fact no food or water at all, not even a left-behind dirty sock.

  The gas tank was about half full and, peering over the back, I saw painted there the boat’s registration number together with its name, Maiden Voyage. Dumb name. Rust-And-Dust, maybe, but Maiden Voyage? No way. This boat is almost as scuzzy-looking as those fur-people. However, this is my maiden voyage. Maybe it’s a sign.

  Visions of me, gripping the helm and looking noble, ran through my head, as I guided my pitifully small ship across the vast ocean to some unspecified but desperately important task. After all, when Mom said to stay away from boats, she was really talking about the people who were on the boats. She didn’t mean the boats themselves.

  That was when I remembered what I had been trying to forget. My phone call. Mom and Dad must be worried sick. I was supposed to call them last night. Sitting on one of the storage benches that ran the length of both sides of the boat, I took a cell phone out of the sampo. What could I tell them?

  That I wasn’t paying attention the way I promised and ran into a boat? That I was kidnapped by furry cannibals who were going to hold me for ransom but decided to leave me to starve instead?

  I knew exactly what they would say. Stop. Come home immediately. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. Do not visit your grandparents. Go To Jail.

  I racked my brain for a suitable excuse. There was nothing I could say that would keep me out of deep doodoo that didn’t involve serious, major whoppers.

  How could I lie? I just spent nearly a year practically not talking to Mom and Dad because I thought they were keeping secrets from me, lying and making up stories about Grandma and Grandpa mermaid. I had sworn up and down that there would be no more lies and no more secrets in our family. Mom and Dad needed to know that I was okay and I had to tell them the truth.

  I picked up the phone and started to dial. Halfway through I noticed something catching the light from inside the rusty chain wrapped around the winch. It’s pretty obvious that this boat hasn’t been washed or polished for months, maybe years. There is nothing here that’s clean enough to shine in the sun like that.

  Intensely curious, I put the phone down on the bench and went over to examine the winch. The world will not collapse if my call to Mom and Dad has to wait another five minutes.

  CHAPTER 7

  MIRIAM, PHONE HOME

  As soon as I got close, the twinkle disappeared. I backed off until I could see it again, then kept my eyes fixed on the spot until I was close enough to touch it. Bending over I peered into the links looking for a shiny spot. Nothing. Just layers and layers of rusty chain.

  Maybe if I unwound the chain a little, it would loosen things up, so I could see better. Marking the spot with a piece of red tape from the sampo so I wouldn’t have to play hide and seek again, I tested the handle.

  It didn’t budge.

  I’m on the junior swim team at the JCC. I may be skinny, but I’m a whole lot stronger than I look. I checked for some kind of locking device, and found it. It was open. Those fur people must be professional weight lifters.

  The end of the chain trailed along the deck and hung over the side of the boat. I peered over the edge and saw a drag anchor tied to the chain and hanging just above the water level. My god. Those crazy people left the boat to drift. They were never coming back.

  That was the good news. The bad news? I could be anywhere. I could be in the middle of the ocean.

  I can’t call now. I can’t tell Mom and Dad that I’m lost at sea. What are they going to do? Send the Coast Guard? Where? I looked at the sun. It was balanced on the horizon like a big egg yolk. It’s still early. They can wait.

  It looks like I’ll be traveling by boat after all. I strode over to the helm taking deep shaky breaths with each step. I was really going to do this. At least I knew what I had to do. Check the compass, point the boat to where the shoreline is supposed to be, and pray that I wasn’t more than a tank-full of gas from something familiar that would put me back on course.

  The controls were on a kind of dashboard attached to the front of the cabin. A captain’s chair was screwed to the deck on an extra tall post so that the pilot could see over the roof of the cabin.

  I climbed onto the chair and took a good look at the controls. The engine used a key lock, but there was no key, so I took one out of the sampo. It fit. The engine started easily and sounded smooth. Opening the throttle slightly, I checked the compass and turned the boat towards shore, gradually pushing the throttle up to almost full speed.

  At speed, the Maiden Voyage left an impressive wake fanning out at the back like a double peacock tail. The bow cut deeply into the sunrise streaked water, spraying me with warm droplets of salty ocean.

  I gave a silent thank you to my U
ncle Andy who taught me how to pilot his cabin cruiser. That was the bay. This is the ocean. But the boats work basically the same way and so as long as the sea stays nice and smooth, this wasn’t a whole lot different.

  After about a half hour of being surrounded by empty horizon, sailing from nowhere to nowhere, I started to get that prickly feeling at the back of my neck, like when someone’s watching you. Boats don’t have rear view mirrors. It’s not real important to know what’s behind you. Usually nothing. But the prickly feeling wouldn’t go away. My shoulders started to twitch, like when a ghost walks over your grave.

  I couldn’t help thinking that somehow, one of the fur people was following the boat. It would have to be Vacant Eyes. He really did drown yesterday and it was his ghost that came back out of the sea. That’s why he wasn’t wet. Now he’s here. He wants his boat back.

  Slowly, I turned. A dark shape under the water, as long as a grown man was following the boat. My heart stopped completely for one long second until I realized what it must be.

  Way cool, I have a dolphin. It’s come to rescue me. I looked around for more, but that was it. Slowing the boats speed, I watched for a while, hoping for a display of dolphin-frolic. No show. My dolphin continued, boringly and very undolphinly, to swim steadily along at the tail end of the boats wake, so that, even though it was near the surface, the choppy water obscured its shape.

  Bored, I returned to scrutinizing the horizon ahead. Less than ten minutes later, I spotted a sliver of land on the horizon. What a relief.

  Now that I was approaching land, there was liable to be more human activity. Finally deciding that maybe parents occasionally give good advice, I kept my eyes peeled for other boats, so I could avoid them.

  I also watched the emerging shoreline and it didn’t take long to spot a big orange water tower with a sailboat painted on the side that I had seen not long before I ran into the fishing net.

  I’m back on course. It’s time to go. I get off the boat. I call Mom and Dad, let them know that everything is okay. Leave the Maiden Voyage to her fate and pick up where I left off.

  I kept glancing back to check on my tail. I’m beginning to think that this is not the dolphin rescue society. I wonder if I can call 911 and tell them I’m being stalked by a fish. I know I’m `not on the food chain’ as Dad so graphically put it, but Big Fish was still there, a dark shadow in the boats wake. Well, whatever it is, will probably go away when we get closer to shore. I can get off the boat then.

  The red tape I had left to mark the sun-twinkle was staring at me from across the deck. This won’t take long, I thought, turning the throttle down to neutral and leaving the boat to rock gently on the barely-there waves. I took a cleaning rag and a small can of Four-In-One oil out of my bag and applied myself to the gears that turned the winch. I proceeded to scrape, rub, tighten and loosen until my arms ached.

  Forty-five minutes later, the sun no longer anywhere near the horizon, I gave up. There was no sign of Big Fish. He must have given up too. Taking a water bottle and a PB&J out of my bag, I sat on the deck using the winch for a backrest. I made a deal with myself. First I eat. Then I call. Then, if I can’t get the winch moving, I’m out of here. I took another cell phone out of the bag and put it down next to me. This would be my reminder.

  I felt a lot less aggravated once I had eaten. I’ll bet those gears just needed some time for the oil to sink in, I thought. I reached out and pushed the handle. No dice.

  Maybe it just needs thicker grease, I thought. I’ll give it another ten minutes. I took a can of `Thicker Grease’ out of my bag and put the phone on the bench next to the first one so it wouldn’t get greasy.

  It took all of the ten minutes I had allowed myself just to get the lid off the can but finally I was ready. Taking the `Thicker Grease Spreading Cloth’ that came with it, I got to work.

  Another ten minutes and the handle jiggled when I pushed. Something fell out, bounced a couple of times and rolled into a corner.

  I knew it. Those creepy people were smuggling jewels. This is the proof. I scooped up the small blue-gray pebble from the deck. It felt warm to the touch, probably from the friction of the moving chain. It was pretty, and certainly shiny enough to catch the sunlight, but it wasn’t a diamond or a ruby, or any jewel I knew about.

  Hmmm. It must be some kind of uncut jewel, I thought, turning the stone over in my hand. Something special. Something so rare that only an expert would recognize it.

  Like a jewel thief. Maybe a cat burglar, or a pirate. A pirate would have to know all about jewels. I looked up at the mast to where the Jolly Roger would be flying.

  This boat is perfect for modern day pirates. It’s so small, so shabby, no one would suspect a thing. Pirates would have no trouble sneaking up on even the biggest boat.

  We would swarm out of the hold...dozens of us...and board the unsuspecting ship. We will leave no one alive and our gold and jewels will be crusted with human blood.

  I looked around for dark stains on the deck. The green stuff that was growing between the splinters, I wondered what kind of nutrients it needed to grow.

  I bet I’m not the first person to steal this boat. Besides, it would be a shame to leave such a valuable boat to its fate. If I can just get the anchor to work, I can leave it somewhere safe.

  I tucked the pebble into my wing pocket picked up the can of Thicker Grease, and got back to work on the winch. I’ll get this boat safely stowed away and then call Mom and Dad and tell them everything. They’ll be so proud of me.

  CHAPTER 8

  OUT OF GAS

  Big Fish showed up again when I turned the Maiden Voyage south along the coastline. I kept looking for a likely spot to bring her in, but the buildings were getting fewer and fewer and the gas gauge was getting lower and lower—as were my hopes of finding a marina where I could dock my boat.

  After awhile, there was nothing at all but thick jungley-looking trees and bushes growing right up to the water. The only thing that had changed was the fluffy white clouds on the horizon. They were still there, only they weren’t white anymore.

  But the sky remained sunny, the sea stayed smooth and the dark clouds stayed at the edge of the world for the next two hours of nothing but trees and bushes.

  Then they made their move.

  Fat gray clouds unrolled across the sky like a carpet. Within minutes, the wind picked up and the whole sky went black. I smelled the rain before I saw it, a distant curtain of dark on dark. It was still a long way off, but moving in fast.

  Big Fish must have seen it too. I watched the dark shape turn and head back out to deep water.

  “Coward,” I called out. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  Meanwhile, the needle on the gas gauge hovered just under the big E, and I’m thinking, this boat is toast. It’s time to bail. Now I know why Mom and Dad told me to stay away from boats. If I could only find a strip of beach, I thought desperately, I could maybe pull the boat up onto the sand and tie it off somewhere and still get to deep water before the storm hits.

  Two seconds later, and not a moment too soon, I found something even better. A real honest to goodness pirates cove. A whale-bite out of the coastline, just big enough to shelter one pint-sized pirate ship.

  The wind stirred up the waves. It was getting a little choppy, but nothing serious. I cut the speed to head in slowly, not knowing how deep the water was near shore. The sputter I heard as I lowered the throttle was not the sound I expected.

  Oh great. This is just great. The gas couldn’t last another five minutes? Now I have to do the tugboat thing. I looked back at the rain. It seemed to have settled down at about the halfway mark. So I turned off the engine and stomped my way to the front of the boat, carefully stepping around the green patches...you never know.

  A coil of rope was tied off to a cleat with a sailor’s knot where the two sides of the hull came to a point at the very front of the boat. I tied the loose end around my waist and jumped. This time I remembered not t
o twist my necklace until after I was in the water.

  Normally, I wouldn’t be able to swim very far with a boat around my waist, but now I had a tail and it was almost easy. Under the surface, the water was turbulent and murky. Even with mermaid eyes, I had to stay on top to see where I was going. The wind seemed to be blowing from every direction at once and the waves were getting bigger, but it was kind of fun.

  U-u-u-p and over. U-u-u-p and over I went, splashing down from the peak of each wave into the deep between-space. The salt didn’t sting my eyes and the water didn’t get up my nose. Well, actually, it did get up my nose, but that was okay.

  It took ten, maybe fifteen minutes of hard work to get to the entrance of the cove. As soon as I was inside, the waves quieted down to light choppy. That was good. I was ready for some easier swimming.

  The last thing I saw before the rain hit was the true shape of the cove. Two inlets on either side made the shoreline of my pirate cove look like a cats head with two pointy little ears at the top.

  That was it. One quick look and then the rain was on me. Visibility was zero. The water went completely smooth as the rain pounded down so hard, that I could feel it hitting my tail under the water. There was so much of it that it muffled the sound of the wind. Blinded by the rain above the water and the stirred up sand below, I pulled, in what I hoped was the direction of the larger of the two inlets. I was a tired little tugboat.

  I don’t know what would have happened if the boat hadn’t stopped of its own accord. Then my tailfin brushed bottom and I realized that I had gone about as far as I could go. I turned around and pulled on the rope until I was all pulled out, to finish grounding the boat. It was the best I could do. Without bothering to untie the rope from my waist, I sank to the bottom and did nothing for a long time.

  CHAPTER 9

  UNDERTOW

  When I was finally ready to surface, it was like I didn’t. Under water. Over water. It was the same. Swimming blindly through the wall of rain, unless of course I was still under the water--a distinct possibility--I wondered how I would know when the water stopped and the shore began. That was about when I not only couldn’t tell above from below, but I was not so sure about my forward progress either.