The moment things changed, I think we all knew it. I know now they must have been just lulling us all along. Because right when it seemed that we were in the very middle of the fleet, the ships suddenly began to drop anchor all around us, turning toward us from all directions. Somewhere ahead of us we heard the captain yell, “Hands on deck!” Then (the thought of it makes me break out in goose bumps) we saw one ghost floating down the side of his ship, holding a rope. He turned to look toward us, made eye contact with me, and smiled.
“Sam,” my mom said, gazing at the ghost. “Get under the bench. And don’t come upstairs, no matter what.”
* * *
The captain and the shipmates were already above deck when we emerged, and everything was in chaos.
“Starboard port!” Captain Bill yelled, throwing himself at the ship’s wheel and trying to steer away from the closest ship, which was bearing down on us so fast it was nearly on us. A cluster of ghosts stood at the other ship’s bow, jumping up and down and getting ready to come aboard.
Even I could see the captain’s efforts were useless. Steering away from one ship only moved us into the path of another, and we wouldn’t be fast enough to maneuver through whatever space was left within the fleet. Still, Millie threw herself onto the wheel beside him to help. The rest of us scattered across the deck, looking for weapons; Mom grabbed a loose plank and held it back over her shoulder like a baseball bat, Oliver grabbed two empty champagne bottles from a barrel the captain used for trash, and I grabbed a rusty barrel lid.
Suddenly Sam was on the deck beside me, and even though I hissed at him to go back belowdecks, he too went looking for a weapon and ended up with a grubby old fishing net. He came to stand right beside me, and I reached for his hand. Oliver moved to his other side.
“Are you going to net them to death, Sam?” Oliver asked, giving Sam a smile that—looking back on it now—seems so brave, since we knew at that moment we were facing certain doom.
“I might have to,” Sam said solemnly.
“Can ghosts even be hit with anything?” I asked softly over Sam’s head, and Oliver mouthed back, I don’t know.
That’s where we were, standing with our useless weapons waiting to be boarded, when there was a deafening sound above us. I can only describe it by saying that in Cliffden, when I was little, the man at the shoe store used to give me a free balloon whenever Mom took me to get new shoes. He’d blow it up right there in front of me with a big metal helium tank. The sound was like that—a whooshing and whistling of air—only times a thousand.
We all looked up at the same moment—even the ghosts on the other ships.
Virgil was hovering high above us. But he didn’t look like Virgil. His head and feet and arms and legs were all normal and Virgil-size . . . but his usually skinny chest was now enormous and expanding outward—like he was sucking in gallons-full of air.
Actually, it turns out he was sucking in gallons-full of air. Because in the next moment he began to blow.
A wind came out of Virgil’s mouth that was stronger than any winds we’d encountered on the entire voyage. He blew right into the backs of our sails, and suddenly we began to move—so fast that I, and even a few of the crew, went tumbling onto the deck.
We were cruising, and now Captain Bill and Millie threw themselves against the ship’s wheel with renewed strength—their arms and backs trembling from the effort. The captain kept shouting orders over his shoulder and the crew obeyed. Suddenly everyone had a job, easing the sails, adjusting the jib. The Alexa slid narrowly between the two ships on either side of us, which had been just about to board—missing each of them by a few yards—and then veered right. We immediately pivoted left and slipped between another two. The ghost ships, without Virgil’s wind working right behind them, moved too slowly to adapt.
Carving a crooked and chaotic path, with barely any idea of what we were doing or what we’d do next and at breakneck speed, we made our way through the ships coming at us in all directions. Any wrong move would have sent us crashing into another boat’s hull, but Captain Bill made no wrong moves. Every once in a while the wind would stop for a moment as Virgil took in more air, but he did this marvelously fast, and his lungs seemed like they could blow forever. He never faltered once.
Finally, the fleet began to thin, so that soon we were passing through the stragglers, which were more and more spread out. The deluge had slowed to a rush, and then to a trickle, until finally we left the last of the ships behind us, its vaporous crew gazing after us and trying to turn about in mute rage.
It wasn’t for another few minutes that Virgil let up on the blowing, and we finally all began to relax. Captain Bill let out a long, ragged sigh and beamed at us. He put his arm around Millie, who stepped away with her head held up, looking at my dad. Dad stepped up and laid a hand on the captain’s shoulder.
“Thank you, Captain,” he said. I wonder if I was the only one who remembered that Dad had tried to tell us about Virgil before, and the captain had cut him off.
“Who knew Virgil could breathe like that!” Mom said, gazing into the sky and beaming.
“Of course he’s got good lungs,” Dad said, looking befuddled. “Why did you think I hired him?” He looked around at all of us as if it was the first time it had ever occurred to him that we’d thought he’d hired a useless angel.
Above us, now back to normal size and hovering above the topmast, catching his breath and with a hopeful smile on his face as he looked down at us, Virgil didn’t flicker. He blazed.
January 30th
We’re far into the Southern Sea, and the world has gone white. The water is pearly, almost colorless, and still as glass. White slabs of ice float along the ocean, butting against the ship in little thuds as we move south. There’s hardly any land, and the land that we do see is covered deep in snow. The Cloud, up high and directly above us, is the darkest thing in sight.
Right now I’m bundled in the thick winter clothes supplied by Prospero, and perched dizzyingly high in the basket of the topmast. It’s so cold that my breath is puffing out in clouds around my head. But I needed some space, and Virgil told me I could borrow this spot for a while.
Technically, now that he’s saved our lives, he should be headed back to his angel boss at the Bright Market in LA, but he says he’s staying on the technicality that he won’t have officially saved us until he gets us to the frozen continent in one piece. He says his boss has ways of knowing when his job is done, but also that he won’t mind if Virgil fudges things to linger a little longer, and that it happens all the time when guardian angels like the people they’re working for.
It’s a good thing: It’s taken his lungs to keep the ship moving in this windless place. Dad’s anemometer has actually turned out to be pretty useless here, since there’s zero wind to speak of. Our sails are forlorn from all the wear and tear, and we haven’t been able to stop anywhere to patch them properly, but they’re still holding up well enough.
Anyway, right now Virgil’s taking a little break. The last time I saw him he was in the galley with Millie: She was wrapped up in a blanket watching the fire, and Virgil was in a corner pretending to read but occasionally stealing glances at her. He admitted, one night about a week ago when I asked him, that he did fly off in fear when the first phantom ship approached us. He told me that he was headed up the Chilean coast, just as I’d imagined (though I didn’t tell him that), when he changed his mind. But I promised him I wouldn’t ever reveal that to Millie.
The captain says we’ll be arriving at the shore of the Southern Edge in a matter of days. I can hardly believe we’re almost there! Ever since the day of the ghost ships, everything—us, the crew, Captain Bill, and the world around us—has gotten quieter, whiter, more subdued and more still. Last night was the one exception—and it was something I’ll never forget.
* * *
Millie and I were in my berth conspiring when it happened. We’d been discussing Mom and the captain again, and the fact
that they seem to pal around even more since the day we escaped the ghost fleet. We had decided, after about half an hour of going over all the evidence, that if anyone is going to stop what’s happening between them, it will have to be us. (We just haven’t figured out how yet.)
Suddenly the door opened and Oliver appeared, his green eyes wide and full of excitement.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You have to see.” He turned and hurried up the stairs. We followed, wearing only our fleece long johns and hats and thick wool socks.
On the decks it was snowing—a soft steady stream of white puffy flakes that drifted down slowly, blowing gently back and forth in the cold breeze. The sun was setting behind a thick gray blanket of clouds on the horizon, and a large indistinct lump sat on the water. It took another moment to realize it was an island. And then I noticed, with amazement, that it appeared to be inhabited. Warm yellow lights glowed from its snowy shore. And moving in front of those lights, dark shapes on four legs . . . hundreds of them.
The captain tilted the wheel to the right, and we drifted closer. The shapes soon sorted themselves into creatures with enormous antlers, so plentiful they were like a walking forest.
“Reindeer!” Mom gasped. I didn’t know she and Sam had come up behind me.
The lights grew brighter as we got closer, illuminating the thick-furred creatures moving across the snowy pasture, sniffing and puffing in the cold air. Beyond them was something even more astonishing: a great dark lodge—tall and wide and rambling, with spires at the roofline and log walls that went on and on in all directions, topped with pale green and dark red curlicues. It reminded me of pictures my mom had shown me once in our encyclopedia, of Viking chapels from hundreds of years ago, only bigger, and more rambling and crooked.
“What is it?” Mom asked.
“That’s the home of the wild frontiersman, Santa Klaus,” Captain Bill said. Sam let out a chirp of excitement, straining on his tiptoes at the railing, his wool hat all askew.
“This is where all the presents get made?”
Captain Bill nodded.
“What are those little huts?” Mom asked, pointing to the sprawl of pointed houses scattered around the main lodge.
“Those belong to the elves, a cold-weather people who’ve lived here for centuries. And this is the only island on earth where reindeer have evolved to fly. Klaus is the only Northerner who’s figured out how to exist down here among them all. He came, I suppose, hundreds of years ago by ship—from Finland, rumor has it. And the Cloud has never come for him. Who knows, maybe he’s not from Finland, maybe he’s from the Extraordinary World. Maybe that’s why.” The captain widened his eyes at Sam, who grinned.
“Anyway, once he discovered the secret of the reindeer, he made the choice about using them to deliver gifts . . . or at least that’s what I’ve read. I think it’s the way he deals with the isolation, all that cabin fever.”
Now even the crew was gathered with us at the rails, watching the shore. I knew they all must be thinking the same thing I was: I wanted so badly to be in that warm, cozy lodge, sitting by a fire, maybe even talking to Santa Klaus, safe from harm and the cold.
“Can we stop?” Sam the Mouse asked. “Please please can we stop?”
The captain rubbed Sam’s head, but Sam pulled away, rubbing his hair with his mitten as if trying to wipe away the captain’s touch. The captain didn’t seem to notice.
“I wish we could, Sam. But he’s a private man. He doesn’t allow visitors. And anyway, we need to get to where we’re going. I’ll bet he knows the secrets of the edge of the earth,” Captain Bill went on. “But I suppose he’ll never tell.”
We all stayed and watched as the lodge grew farther and farther away and more and more obscured by the dusk. The lights grew smaller, until they were so far away that we couldn’t see them anymore, and Santa’s island was swallowed by the dark.
* * *
I’m getting too cold to stay up here, but I wanted to write one more thing: that Oliver and I were standing on the deck about an hour ago, watching for more islands (with no luck), when a floating slab of ice drifted past. On it was a single polar bear, her dark eyes peering at us through the mist while the rest of her body was barely visible against the gray horizon.
“I wonder where she’s going,” Oliver said.
As she floated past, it seemed I was looking right into her eyes and she was looking right into mine. I imagined maybe she was wishing us good luck, and I wished her good luck too.
It looked like she was floating into oblivion. Will she ever make it where she wants to go? Will we?
February 2nd
In my bunk , late late at night, and the smell of ice is in the air. I’m trying to keep my hands warm by writing under the covers. I can’t sleep; it’s been an eventful night.
It was the three of us, Millie and Virgil and me, who saw what happened. We were perched in the topmast basket together, taking in the view of nothing much and chatting (also about nothing much!). I was bundled to the gills, but shivering and ready to go inside. Still, Millie had insisted we stay and keep Virgil company. I don’t know why she wants me around her so much these days, but there we were in any case, with a bird’s eye view of the sea below us and the icebergs ahead of us that mark the outer boundaries of the Southern Edge. Our breaths were fogging around us, and I huddled closer to Millie for warmth. She handed me the thermos she’d lugged up for Virgil (she’d forgotten that angels don’t get cold or drink or eat) and I took a sip.
As I did, I glanced over at Millie and noticed she was moving her lips without saying anything, staring at the icebergs ahead of us.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“Oh,” Millie looked slightly embarrassed. “Just making wishes, like you do. About the Extraordinary World. I keep saying to myself . . . It’s there, it’s there, it’s there.”
I looked ahead silently, and Millie stopped her wishing after a while and gazed at her mittened hands.
“I’ve been really hard on Dad,” she said quietly. “I regret that.”
“I’m sure he knows you love him,” Vigil consoled her.
We went on staring at the dim silhouettes of icebergs ahead until a noise below distracted us. It was Mom and Captain Bill, Mom holding the Captain’s arm to steady herself as they came out on the poop deck and sat on a bench, both bundled tightly in their coats. The captain had a bottle of wine tucked under one armpit. He set it down, then lit the lantern with a matchbook from his pocket, the glow of the flame lighting up his face.
“I always bring a special bottle to celebrate arriving at the end of a voyage,” he said. “It helps to have a pretty lady present.” Millie met my eyes and rolled her own in disgust.
He moved a coil of rope aside so that Mom could get more comfortable.
“I’d love to know more about your late wife,” Mom said, “if you’d be willing to talk about her.”
The captain took a sip of wine and examined the glass, then he smiled. “She loved plants. She grew one in every pot, sometimes in tea kettles . . . everywhere. She was a ball of fire, always excited about something new—a new song or a new type of flower she’d found out about. You wouldn’t think a Cloud would take someone with so much life in her. There’s a lot we don’t know about Clouds, I guess.”
“You don’t have to talk about it if . . .”
“No, I like talking about her. She loved to go down to the ocean and look for shells. We were down there one day searching, when we saw the Cloud for the first time, way down the beach, just hovering along the sand. I didn’t think much of it, but she knew. Somehow she knew right away it was her it had come for.”
My mom reached for the captain’s hand and stroked it, and he took hold of her fingers. “I’m so sorry,” she said. Millie reached for my hand and dug her fingernails into my palm.
The captain looked up at my mom. And then he leaned forward, almost touching his lips to hers.
Mom shot up
off the bench in surprise, making us all flinch, especially Captain Bill.
“What was that?!” she asked.
The captain tried to recover himself; he leaned forward pleadingly, looking tortured, like the romantic hero of an old poem. “Mrs. Lockwood, Rebecca, you’re headed into this frigid wilderness, on this futile search. You’ve been led from one danger to another and lost everything you ever had. And you, well, I wonder if maybe you don’t deserve better. I think we could be there for each other.”
My mother gazed at him intently; it was impossible to tell her thoughts. My heart was in my throat, and I could feel Millie’s pulse through her hand.
“From the minute I set eyes on you at the Squid’s Arms, I knew you were something special. You’re the reason I’m here; you’re the reason I followed you and Gracie onto Venice Boulevard and the reason I’ve been here ever since. When we arrive at the continent and the others get off,” Captain Bill said, “I’d like you to stay behind, with me. Come to Nova Scotia.” He swallowed deeply. Mom appeared to be transfixed, in shock. He took this as an encouraging sign, and reached up to touch her face, trying to raise his lips to hers. She stepped back so abruptly that he lost his balance, almost falling off the bench.
“I’m a married woman!” Mom stuttered. “You’re . . . supposed to be helping us keep our family together! You’re supposed to be our friend.” She looked down at her hands, as if she’d just discovered she had them. “I haven’t lost everything! Do you think I’d ever leave my family?” she asked. She turned on her heel, then said firmly over her shoulder, “They’re my everything.” She hesitated for a moment, as if she couldn’t believe what had just happened, and then she glided down the deck, where she disappeared from view.
Up in the crow’s nest, two happy crows and one angel watched it all, and hugged each other tight in utter relief.
* * *
Tonight—after we celebrated in Millie’s room by drinking hot chocolates together, and after I’d gone into my room to turn in for the night—I changed my mind, bundled myself up again, and tiptoed up to the poop deck to look at the icebergs in the distance one more time before sleeping. It’s there, I said under my breath. It’s there.