The smaller of the two figures felt the change in footing as the couple moved from land onto the wooden pier. She put her free hand onto the chest of her companion and stopped him. Then she turned inwards towards her companion, he turned in a similar fashion and they embraced.
"I've never left my city before," she whispered. "Will I ever come back?"
"Yes," he said. "To accept your father's surrender."
"When?"
"We don't know. In the meantime, you'll stay on the sailing ship with some of my family."
"What are they like?"
"You'll like them. They won't bite."
"What is this biting? You never told me that aboriginal people ate their guests."
"It's only an expression. It's a way of saying that you have nothing to fear."
"Because they'll knock me unconscious before they eat me?"
"No, no. It was a stupid expression. I shouldn't have said it."
# # # # # # # #
Mathias took Kashmira along the outside deck to the door into the living room. The interior of the ship was fully dark.
"We have to keep the lights off until we're out of sight of the shore," a female voice said.
"I'll get the ship underway," a male voice said. Then he brushed by them and out onto the deck.
"Are you hungry?" the female voice asked. Strictly a conversational opening.
"Are you?" Kashmira retorted and stepped back against a wall so that she couldn't be attacked from behind. Nobody saw her frightened movement because it was too dark.
An awkward silence ensued.
In a surprisingly short time considering that a sailing ship would have to maneuvre in a small harbour in the dark and by using only its sails, the male voice returned and said, "We're well away from the port." He must have flicked a switch because the ship's interior lights came on.
"Granny," Mathias started. "This is my friend, Kashmira."
"I'm pleased to meet you." My goodness, she's pretty.
"And this is our family's grandfather, but we all call him Doc. Doc, this is my friend, Kashmira."
"I'm glad you made it aboard safely." Doc looked at Kashmira. She was plastered against the wall of the galley, both hands latched onto Mathias' arm, her body half hidden behind his. She's scared to death of us. "Relax," Doc encouraged. "We don't eat our guests on their first night."
...
"I was kidding. Winnie, you knew I was kidding. Why would she react like that? Are you sure she can swim?"
# # # # # # # #
Mathias had to use his sling to catch up to Kashmira who was swimming desperately back to the pier. After a few minutes of a frightened feminine voice interacting with a soothing masculine voice, the couple swam back to the ship. Doc lowered a kind of rope that Kashmira had never seen before – one of William's filament lines. They wound the rope around themselves and then Doc and Granny started heaving on that rope to bring them aboard. That part was all pretend. Actually, Winnie was hovering in the sky above them using the antigravitational weapon on her sling to lift them into the sky and onto the ship.
Winnie reassured Kashmira that she would not be eaten, led her to her cabin where her two suitcases were waiting for her, told her that they would all be sleeping in late since it was now 4 a.m., brought her a number of towells to dry herself, and told her that her own cabin was right next door if Kashmira needed anything. Winnie didn't say that Mathias' cabin was now at the far end of the ship – a sudden reassignment of cabins that Granny imposed after seeing how much physical contact there had been between Kashmira and him both before and after the unplanned swim. Doc re-programmed the ship to sail steadily southeast through the waters and everybody went to sleep.
Check that. Almost everybody went to sleep. Somebody made a visit to the galley.
# # # # # # # #
It was late morning and the Wilizy/Asia was making steady progress through the easy swells of the South Pacific Ocean. With a late breakfast ready, Granny sent Winnie below deck to see if Kashmira were awake and, if so, to bring her up to the galley. Winnie sent Granny, Doc and Mathias a mind message a minute later.
You better come down here.
# # # # # # # #
Narrator: The conversation that follows was conducted completely in mind-messages. I'll tell you who was thinking what.
Winnie: Sit on the deck away from her. Don't try and approach the bed.
...
Granny: What's she doing, Winnie?
Winnie: I believe she's praying. She has a string of beads in her hands and is rubbing them and mumbling some things. I don't understand what she's saying.
Granny: She could be a member of a Roman Catholic Church. I've seen them use beads like that.
Mathias: The church building she went to used to be called the Maasin Cathedral. It was Roman Catholic. I saw a plaque that said it was built in the 1700s. Some other type of religion took the building over after The Troubles.
Doc: Does she know that we're here, Winnie? Her eyes are closed.
Winnie: Yes. I believe so. When I approached the bed, she took the wooden spoon, placed the sharp point over her heart, and told me not to come any closer. That's when I called you.
Granny: She sharpened the end of my best wooden spoon. No wonder I couldn't find it.
Winnie: The knife she used to sharpen the spoon is next to her on the bedspread. For some reason, she used the wooden spoon to keep me away rather than the knife. Mathias, have you seen her like this before?
Mathias: No. Never.
Doc: She has her back against an open suitcase, and her other suitcase is covering her belly. Does anybody have any idea why she did that?
...
Granny: Winnie, can you hear what she's mumbling?
Winnie: Yes, barely. It doesn't make any sense. She's saying the same five words over and over. "Answer, boss, calcium, dens, and equus."
Granny: The last word is Latin. Equus means horse. It's where we got our word "equine."
Winnie: You know Latin?
Granny: A little. My first husband preached in an offshoot of a Roman Catholic religion. They had Latin prayers and ceremonies. Those other words sound English to me. Those five words do not make any sense as a prayer.
Winnie: But she's praying.
Granny: Oh yeah, she's praying. Those beads are part of a prayer ritual.
Mathias: Why is she praying?
Granny: Something to do with us, I'd guess. She has a sharp wooden stake ready.
Winnie: Aren't wooden stakes used to kill vampires? From all those oldie-moldies.
Mathias: Is this a reaction to Doc and his comment about eating her?
Doc: I thought she understood now that we weren't cannibals.
Winnie: She does. Besides, she's not threatening to drive a wooden stake through our hearts. She threatened to put one through her own heart.
Granny: Weird.
Winnie: What do we do?
Granny: Wait for her to stop praying.
Doc: I'll bring in some chairs.
Granny: Bring the toast down too. Perhaps she'll get hungry and stop praying.
# # # # # # # #
"Did you sort it out?" Doc asked Granny as she came into the ship's command center in early afternoon.
"Yeah, I believe so. Mathias is making her something to eat right now. Did you know that Kashmira has no idea how to even cut bread?"
"She knows how to cut wooden spoons though. What was that all about?"
"Long story. Did you save me some lunch?"
"There's a plate on the chair behind you. I heard the two of you singing."
"We knew some of the same hymns. She has a lovely voice."
"Was that when she started to trust you?"
"Mphhhhh."
"Sorry. I'll wait for you to finish lunch."
# # # # # # # #
"Where are Mathias and Kashmira now?"
"Near the top of the mast," Doc replied. "They're sitting on a s
par and dangling their feet over the edge. No chance of them walking in on us. She has no fear of heights?"
"Apparently not. She did some cliff diving when she was younger. That's how she knew the ship was flying last night. When she dove off the ship, it took her way too long to hit the water. She figured we were either angels or demons because ships can't fly."
"And settled on demons because we were going to eat her."
"Kidnap her first; eat her second. She has a real fear of being kidnapped. Winnie explained why. Wealthy people in the Philippines often are kidnapped and held for ransom. The kidnappers send body parts home to convince the family to pay up."
"Winnie was in the cabin with you?"
"Yeah. Invisibly. I asked her to listen because she had already established a friendship of sorts with Kashmira. She'll fill Mathias in later."
"Are you kidding? Winnie and Mathias are talking with each other? And it's not a family birthday party?"
"Yeah. They have a truce."
"Kashmira was praying for help to prevent us from doing whatever demons do to humans. This priest of her, the paterfamilias, uses fear to motivate his parishioners to attend church and pray. He tells them that demons will attack sinners if they don't confess every week, for example."
"Why the wooden stake?"
"He showed them some old movies of vampires, werewolves, mummies, zombies, Frankenstein, Godzilla. That kind of thing. He told them those were demons that had been caught on camera before The Troubles. Now they were roaming the world looking for victims. Only weekly confessions would keep them safe at night when the creatures would invade the city looking for people foolish enough to be outside in the dark."
"And the congregation believed that?"
"Why wouldn't they? They had no other information to say otherwise. Plus people did disappear. People who were known to be sinful."
"Victims of the crime bosses?"
"Yeah. The paterfamilias was using their murders as a scare tactic to attract people into his church."
"Where does the wooden stake fit in? Why was she going to put it into her own heart?"
"She wasn't. She was pretending. If any of us touched her, she was planning to put the stake through us. I found a second sharpened spoon under the covers too."
"Huh."
"Yeah. Huh."
"What's that tell us?"
"There's something more to this girl than a pretty face."
"What do we know about her?"
"Winnie says that she can't look at Kashmira's head or else she'll be blinded. Reese says that she has white and light yellow colours. Her white colours are blinding when they are concentrated. I'm too much older than her to get a good reading. I didn't see anything of concern, but Yollie will get a better read."
"The prayer she was working so hard on?"
"The strongest prayer that her bible contains. General purpose, as in I need help, now!"
"Could you make any sense of it?"
"No. I asked if I could see her bible so that I could read the words. She said that people from her church are not allowed to show other people their bibles. If other people found out all of their prayers, that would allow sinners to enter their heaven."
"They have their own heaven?"
"Yeah. Nobody else is allowed in. Only this paterfamilias can give them the key to their heaven by praying on their behalf for their entry. That means that they have to stay on his good side."
"And the suitcases? Why was she trying to wear suitcases?"
"The women of this church are not allowed to get too close to the sun. Otherwise, the radiation from the sun will damage their baby eggs and they'll have miscarriages."
"Getting too close to the sun translates into...."
"Even taking a copter ride."
"So that means the women in this church are effectively prevented from leaving the area. No way for them to learn any other viewpoint."
"They can leave by land, but as far as they know, demons are roaming the world."
"Kashmira was using her suitcases to protect herself from the sun?"
"She didn't have anything else to protect her baby eggs. She had only learned that she had baby eggs recently. She thought a suitcase would stop the sun's bad light. After all, it stopped the sun's regular light. Plus she was in the middle of a wooden ship. For a person who has never been taught any science, she made some reasonable assumptions."
"Does she believe that a ship that flies into the air is a reasonable assumption?"
"I told her the ship was like a copter. If copters can fly into the sky, why couldn't ships? She'll accept that explanation for now."
"And we're not demons or angels."
"Just people like her."
"And you are protected from the sun by ...?"
"Deerskins. There's something in the treated hide to keep out bad sunlight."
"Deerskins? Really?"
"Only for now. We have to find a way to get her out of those fancy expensive clothes and into something more durable."
"Speaking of getting out of those clothes, Kashmira is undressing right now."
"How would you know that?"
"Male genes. They give men the ability to sense when any woman ranked eight or higher on a scale of ten is undressing in our vicinity. Kashmira is down to her skivvies. I can feel the disturbance in the hot chick force." [Narrator: Doc loved Obi-Wan in Star Wars.]
Granny got up to look. "She has undressed as you said, you dirty old man. Mathias is holding her clothes and looking the other way. How'd you know? Say one more misogynist sentence and I'll be slipping female hormones into your porridge."
"I thought you already were. I feel like weeping every time I eat breakfast now. I can see her in a reflection in the window. She's standing on the spar now."
"She's going to dive. I have to stop her."
"Why? Is she too close to the ship?"
"No. At this height, the impact of the water will rip off all of her clothes."
"How would you know that?"
"I may have done some cliff diving in my day."
"And?"
"Lost both the top and the bottom of my undies and couldn't find them."
"Lots of boys around?"
"Coldest afternoon in the water I've ever spent in my life."
Back to the Table of Contents
Chapter 30
Lucas had asked Mathias to return to the home compound to help him plan for the rescue of the Safe Haven gangs. Winnie was also needed in the operation, but first Granny gave her a Please find me list. Winnie found several old deerskin dresses and moccasins in one of the barrels inside the caves behind the home compound. The sewing supplies (needles, etc.) were right where Granny had said they'd be in the hall closet of her house. She found the Latin-English dictionary in a used bookstore near Toronto's university.
After Winnie had flown away, Granny marched down to Kashmira's bedroom, knocked, and walked in. Kashmira was lying on the bed, her eyes unfocused.
"Are you making sense of that reading bot?" Granny asked.
Kashmira pulled the bot out of her brain plug and looked at the intruder in her bedroom. "You're in my bedroom," she accused.
"Nope," Granny countered. "You're in my bedroom. This is my ship, so it's also my bedroom. I'm just letting you use this bedroom." She walked to the closet and opened the door, scanning.... "How are you finding that reading bot?"
"It's more difficult than what I had in my school, but I'm understanding most of it."
"Doc will meet with you later this afternoon to review your schoolwork with you. Make a list of any questions you might have from this and any of the other bots you'll be studying today. He'll answer them for you." Granny found what she had been looking for. Suitcases. She pulled both out of the closet, placed them on the bed, and opened them up. Then she pulled a greenish/yellowish skirt off a hanger, folded it carefully, and placed it in one of the suitcases. Back to the closet...
"What are you doing?"
/>
"Storing your good clothes. These skirts are far too flimsy for ship life. They're also too expensive to risk being damaged. One tear and they'd be useless."
"I'd buy more," Kashmira replied.
"Do you see a skirt store around here?"
"Oh."
"Even if you saw a skirt store, how would you pay for them?"
"Oh."
# # # # # # # #
Kashmira was off the bed now, trying to stop Granny from taking more skirts off the hangers. Kashmira was standing in front of her closet with arms outspread, trying to protect her basketball hoop. Granny, a giant, was dribble-driving towards that basketball hoop. Kashmira's puny little arms were no match. Granny walked right through them.
"You have to give the skirts back to me. They're mine."
"I will give them back to you. When you're off the ship, you'll be able to wear them safely. For now, they're going into storage."
Kashmira looked around for help defense. None was apparent. She jumped onto the bed and sat in the opened suitcase. The one that was half filled with skirts.
That slowed Granny down for about two seconds. She draped the skirt she was carrying over her left shoulder, reached into the suitcase with both hands, lifted a non-skirt out of that suitcase, and dropped it on the bed. Kashmira bounced a few times and then stood by the bed watching Granny fill the suitcase.
"Take off that skirt," Granny directed. "It has to be stored too."
Kashmira looked up at Granny defiantly. Granny looked down at Kashmira stubbornly. The reader may remember the size difference. Granny = giant; Kashmira = diminutive. Kashmira unbuttoned the skirt and handed it to her. Granny folded the skirt carefully and zipped the suitcase shut. She pulled the second suitcase to the edge of bed and opened it up. The first blouse made its way resolutely into the suitcase.
"These are very nice blouses. But they're far too thin to give you any protection. The skirts offer no protection either."
"Protection?"
"You know. From the sun. Remember what your paterfamilias tells all the women in the flock. Don't get too close to the sun or you'll lose your baby eggs."
"But we're floating on the water. We're not in the sky."
"Sunrays are beating down on us from above. Some sunrays are also reflecting off the water. That's why it's so bright out there. Lots and lots of dangerous sunrays. I wouldn't want to be responsible if you were never able to have babies." Granny was not above using every trick possible to bring Kashmira into the real world. "Give me your blouse."
Kashmira did. "What am I supposed to wear?"