Jay Lake - Green

My cooking acquired a cachet aboard Southern Escape. Lao Jia traded me lessons in Hanchu cookery for my culinary knowledge, especially of baking. Bread was not such a great thing in the Han countries, I quickly learned, and desserts even less so. We prepared ambitious dinners for the captain and the passengers, while also spicing up the sailors’ stew and biscuit in different ways.

A fresh catch was brought in almost every day. I knew far more about game than about seafood, and was content to learn from Lao Jia there as well. He showed me how to judge a fish, where to look for worms or other parasites, what to check in the gut to see if it had been unhealthy. Some we threw overboard for the sharks. What he approved of was sliced thin for serving cold or as an inclusion in the fried Hanchu dishes; otherwise thick for me to work with as steaks. I quickly moved toward lighter sauces with sharp flavors to complement the strong tastes and odors of fish.

I brought puddings to the table, pastries, dishes of fruit mashed frozen from the ice boxes below, or mixed into compotes and salads. Lao Jia made his stirred fryings, steamed little dumplings of fish and shrimp, and showed me how to pickle meat until it threatened to rot but tasted divine.

At the same time, Srini came around to the galley or found me on the deck every day and spoke to me awhile in Seliu. He was concerned at how little I knew.

“You are a girl close to grown, but your accent is Stone Coast and your vocabulary has many oddities.”

He was forced to explain several of those words.

“I hate that I talk Petraean so well,” I told him, “and my own words so bad.”

“Then we will talk.” Srini spoke of the doings of the ship, the food we’d prepared that day or the night before, pointed out people and described them to me. He talked about the Wheel, which underlies so much of Selistani life, for the people believe it explains the fate and purpose of their souls. His words were like water on a sun-baked pot. I felt Seliu stirring within me. I knew, most unkindly, that Papa would have said little of what Srini told me, but it was still the tongue of my birth. The sounds lay deep inside, waiting only for an awakening such as this.

I also knew from my time aboard Fortune’s Flight that we would be weeks in the crossing. More, depending on the winds. I also knew from what Federo had told me that I did not want to take passage all the way to Kalimpura.

“Srini,” I said one day, a week into our lessons and eleven days out of Copper Downs. “I must ask your help.”

“What is it, Green?” He smiled his smile, which lifted the droopy mustache he’d been growing. “I have made you a boy, and carried you across the sea. I am too poor a tulpa to do much more than that.”

I laughed, more because he expected me to than because the joke deserved it. “I do not want to go to Kalimpura.”

“In truth?” He switched to Petraean. “Lao Jia has asked me if we can keep you aboard as cook’s mate. After last night’s honeyed smelt in plums, I can say the captain will be easily convinced.”

“No, no. I wish to put ashore at Little Bhopura.” For a moment, I switched back to Seliu. “I must go there.”

“Little Bhopura?” he asked in Petraean. Srini tugged at his chin some more. “I am not even sure where that lies. It has never been a port for any ship I’ve served aboard. Surely it is somewhere in Bhopura?”

“Thirty leagues east of Kalimpura, I am told.” I willed him to hear me and understand my need. “I believe we sail past it on our way. A fishing port, where some bring their rice and vegetables to trade.”

“I am only the purser,” he said sadly. “I book cargos and passengers aboard, but the ship sails under the captain and his master. Once we have agreed where we will put in, it is not for me to say.”

“Then will you do this thing for me.” I switched again to our tongue. “When we are close to Little Bhopura, will you tell me? I would swim ashore.”

“Swim! In those waters? The greater devilfish would make a morsel of you!”

“I will chance it. That is where I must go.” To my surprise, I believed my words.

We made passage over open water for two more weeks after my request. The winds were largely favorable, though our voyage was marked by one great storm and several smaller ones, and once the landing of a gigantic calamar-fish, which was thrown back as an ill omen despite Lao Jia’s begging and my own intense curiosity.

Each day, I carefully sewed another knot in my silk. I had taken no bells when I’d left the attic back in Copper Downs, probably because I hadn’t thought to live beyond that morning. Though that moment was only days in my past, it already had the unreal remove of some other life’s memories. Like something read once, and later misrecalled as if it had happened to me.

It happened that I was on deck immediately after the midday service and shortly before Lao Jia and I would begin cooking in earnest for the dinner. The lookout shouted something I did not understand. This was followed by a great cheering from the crew, and much pointing off the starboard bow.

I went to that rail and stared. After a while, I realized that the horizon didn’t have the same wobbling line that it possessed in the other directions.

Land, I thought. The easternmost edge of this portion of Selistan. Bhopura would be somewhere behind that shore. As would my father. And Endurance.

When Lao Jia called me down to help with the dinner, I begged his forgiveness. “This is my home,” I told him. “I have not seen it since I was very small. I must watch the shore.” My Seliu had improved under Srini’s tutelage.

“You were to make potato leek soup for the captain’s table tonight,” he grumbled.

“Just go easy on the salt, and none of those red peppers. They will like it well enough.”

He stumped away again with a shake of his head. The black eyes of the dragons winked at me from his wooden leg.

I stared at the shore, as if somehow I thought I might glimpse Endurance through some gap in the trees I could not yet make out. This has ever been a weakness of mine, looking ahead to what I could not see, but at that time, it still smacked of honest ignorance and rising hope. Somewhere there was the house where I was born. If I looked hard enough, I would recognize something-even just the shape of the crown of a tree. I wanted a sign that my home would welcome me back.

Unfortunately for me, darkness fell before the shore was anything more than a thickening line on the horizon. The smells from the galley were good enough that I would not be shamed. I let the rising breeze pluck at me and wondered how much time the walk from Little Bhopura to my papa’s farm would take. It had been a long road in my memory, but Federo had put the distance at a pair of leagues.

I would walk across the water if I must, to get to shore.

“In the morning, you will see the forests along the beach,” Srini said behind me. “This far to the east, they are mostly wild palms and some pine-nut trees. The soil on the ridges behind the shore is too salty and stony to be of use, so no one lives here but bandits.”

Being of a practical mind, I wondered who those bandits preyed upon. “Will Little Bhopura be the first port we pass?”

“Yes. I spoke to the navigator. He will plot a course that takes us closer in than we might normally go. It is safe enough from reefs, but the wind is chancier.”

“What will Captain Shields say?” I’d been feeding the man at least once a day in the almost-month I’d been aboard Southern Escape, and I still had not met him.

“With luck, he will be saying nothing. If he asks, the navigator will tell him that we are checking the charts. Sometimes that is even being true.”