Liberty (8 page)

I
f the Talberts
were going to sea that very evening, there was no time to waste. Penelope sent Santiago out to buy new clothes, duffel bags, and a stock of parchment and journals.

As soon as he bustled out the door, Cricket said, “Upstairs.”

Penelope agreed. They had to decide what to do with the two-dozen sea serpent maps she had bought all year. Santiago hadn't seen all the maps that had come into the store.

Penelope closed the stairway door and the shutters. Turning from the window, her heart was full. She and Santiago had made the tiny room into a home: Three of his hand-drawn maps were tacked to the wall, while the fourth wall was decorated with knotted ropes Penelope had made while practicing tying, not an easy task for her hoofed feet. The first few were uneven, but, by using her teeth as a third hand, she had improved. A tiny cotton quilt—imported from India—covered the bed. It would go, she decided, stuffing it into her duffle. Things were about to change drastically, and she wanted something familiar.

Cricket knelt and pulled maps from under the bed. “Will you take these with you?”

“No!” Penelope surprised herself at the force of her answer. She took a deep breath. “Why does Captain Kingsley want to find sea serpents? That's the question. What will he do when he finds them? I don't know if we can trust him.”

“I don't know either,” Cricket said. “He's dangerous. Be very, very careful around him.”

“Sea serpents,” Penelope's voice turned dreamy. “Do you think they are real? I've heard so many stories about these creatures, and now —” Penelope sat heavily on the bed. “Are they serpents because we name them that? Are they good instead of evil? I don't know.”

“You think they are intelligent creatures?” Cricket asked in surprise.

“Maybe. I've collected many stories about sea serpents rescuing boats from a storm.” Penelope shrugged. “Maybe Captain Kingsley is only interested in the maps, like he said. Whatever the case, I won't be responsible for helping Captain Kingsley capture a sea serpent. We'll keep our own secrets about maps until we know more.”

“I'll keep these maps safe,” Cricket said. “When you come back, I'll have them.”

Below, the shop bell rang sharply.

“Santiago's back!” Penelope said.

Before they could do anything, Santiago burst into the room. He stopped short. “Ah. Your sea serpent maps.”

Penelope flushed. So, he'd known about them all along.

Then, Santiago stood taller: “I have something to confess. Your map, the old one—”

“Where is it?” Penelope shuffled through the maps, looking for the flat-folded one.

“I borrowed and copied it,” Santiago said. At Penelope's glare, he held up a hoof. “Let me explain. Sea serpents maps sell well. You were buying all the real ones,” he shrugged, “so I made three copies of the old map.”

Penelope stamped in anger, and her hooves rang in the tiny room. “Where are they?”

“That's just it. They're sold. In each copy, I moved the island a few degrees one direction or another. It can't be used to find the island. Not really.”

Penelope burst out. “You copied my map!”

“You wasted money on them. Boat money.” Santiago's voice was tight with anger.

“You don't know the stories,” Penelope whispered.

“And you hid the maps from me.”

“The stories,” Penelope's voice grew stronger with conviction. “Sea serpents are intelligent creatures.”

“Then tell me a story about sea serpents.”

“There's not time. We've got to go.” What a mess she'd made of everything. Santiago was right; she shouldn't have bought the maps behind his back and hid them. But he didn't understand. He hadn't listened to the stories like she had. Sea serpents deserved a chance. She wouldn't be responsible for helping Captain Kingsley capture one. She shivered. Or kill one. Suddenly, she didn't want Captain Kingsley to ever find a sea serpent. In fact, she needed to make sure he never found one. “I'm sorry. But there's not time,” she repeated unhappily.

Cricket thumped the stack of maps. “There's time to answer me this: Why did you sell sea serpent maps behind my back?”

Santiago flushed, and the white blaze on his forehead turned pink with shame. “Extra boat money. It seemed harmless.”

“Harmless?” Cricket was indignant.

“I never said they were original maps,” Santiago said.

“Harmless? You cheated the customers,” Cricket said, her voice was hard with anger.

“I let them assume,” Santiago said.

“You risked my reputation, not just yours.” Cricket waved toward the shop downstairs. The storage bins held samples, but their stock of the most popular maps were stacked neatly in cubbyholes. Everything she had built up over the years depended on her reputation.

Santiago's big shoulders sagged. “I didn't mean to cause you problems.”

Cricket snapped, “No. You just thought of yourself and your needs. Well, now, it's your problem in a big way. Captain Kingsley thinks there's only one original map out there. What if he finds all the copies, too? Who will he suspect?”

They all thought about that. Penelope finally said, “It's too dangerous to ship out with him.” She wanted to get ahead in the world, and she wanted to sail, but she also wanted to live.

“Where else can we get positions as navigator and sailor?” Santiago asked.

“This is what we've been looking for,” Penelope added. “We can always blame another mapmaker.”

“Cheating again!” Cricket cried.

“You're right. I created this problem; I'll take care of it.” Santiago paced the tiny room.

“It's too dangerous,” Penelope repeated.

“It's a risk we have to take,” Santiago insisted. “We've signed on. If we skip out now, Kingsley will have us in jail.”

Penelope leaned her dark face on her hooves. “OK. So there are fake maps out there. If Captain Kingsley finds a map, it won't endanger the sea serpents because it's fake.”

“Maybe.”

“What?”

“Maybe. The oldest map—I sold it accidentally. I thought it was a copy and didn't unfold it to check. There are three copies and one original out there.”

Penelope's groan filled the tiny room. “It's possible Captain Eznick actually has the real one.”

Santiago nodded helplessly.

A thought brightened Penelope's face. “Perhaps it's a bad map anyway.”

Cricket rose now and paced, pushing the pigs onto the tiny bunk in her fury. Her long braid swished gently against the back of her silk trousers. “I won the map in a poker game in Indonesia. An old sailor—he was really ancient—pulled it out and tried to use it as a bet. No one else would give him a copper coin for it, but I gave him ten gold pieces. And later, I bought him drinks while he told me about the sea serpents. It's real. There are serpents on that island.” Nervously, she rolled three maps together. “I wish I had never seen that map.”

Penelope glared at Santiago, “You shouldn't have meddled with my maps.” And she wondered if her anger wasn't partly a cover for her fear.

Santiago said, “You shouldn't have hidden them from me.” His retort was weak, though, and Penelope thought he was scared, too.

Cricket broke the impasse: “We don't have time to argue. Santiago, you'll have to think of something before you catch up to Captain Eznick. Penelope, get these rolled up, and I'll hide them for you.”

They turned attention to the task of getting ready to sail that evening. Penelope stripped the rest of the Talberts belongings from the room and tied them into two neat bundles, which Santiago packed into the duffle bags he had brought.

As she worked, Penelope thought about the upcoming journey. She had two goals, and she worried that they were mutually exclusive. Captain Kingsley had saved her life. She didn't put him on a pedestal and worship him for his actions that day; they were natural and easy actions for a polar bear. But she still felt like she owed him something; she wanted to repay the debt. On the other hand, she worried about the Captain's passion for these sea serpent maps. Sea serpents had to be intelligent creatures; nothing else made sense from the stories she'd heard. And how did his mysterious collection fit in with all this? If the Captain meant harm to sea serpents in any way, she would oppose him. Somehow she had to balance the need to repay a debt with the desire to protect sea serpents, of all things. Life, Penelope thought wryly, was strange.

Before they left, Cricket held out a bag with 50 gold coins to Santiago. “In every port, Captain Kingsley will have you looking for sea serpent maps,” she said. “Buy any likely looking map, sea serpent or not. You'll know what I want. I'll split the profit with you when we sell them.” She shrugged. “Extra boat money, without the cheating.”

Impulsively, Santiago hugged her. “I'll never cheat a customer again.”

“I know.” She dropped the moneybag into his arms.

And finally, Penelope and Santiago went out into the shining afternoon and made their way to the
Hallowe'en
.

T
hat evening
, Mr. Ferco, the harbormaster, completed his log of the day's activities in Boston Harbor: “The
Hallowe'en
departed at dusk, washing out with the tide. Captain Kingsley has taken the helm of the flagship of his ice fleet.”

Mr. Ferco closed the log with a snap, stood, and put on his derby. He yawned and pulled on his handlebar mustache. He paused in his office doorway to watch the lantern-lighters progress around the south side of the water.

Suddenly a fresh smell, like a farmyard after a rain, swept over Mr. Ferco. Looking up, he saw the
Hallowe'en
reach the harbor's entrance, where her sails filled and she leapt toward the open sea.

And Penelope and Santiago were sailors at last.

A
ll Penelope could think about was
going aloft. From the time she met Santiago, she knew this moment would come. Her stomach was queasy, not from seasickness, but from anticipation. As the boat put out to sea, they tried to sleep. Instead, Penelope listened to the shanties which rang out as sail after sail was unfurled. Finally, she dozed fitfully.

At dawn on their first day out to sea, Penelope and Santiago reported for the early morning watch. Her stomach still hadn't settled down, so she didn't eat breakfast. The sky was clear, the breeze, fresh. She stopped at the rail and stared at the dark blue sea where the currents ran so deep. Why hadn't she learned to swim after the incident at Fresh Pond? It had been too cold until just recently, and when the weather warmed, the stevedore business had picked up, leaving her no time.  

The mate called, “First watch, over here.”

Santiago was sent to the poop deck, the deck open to the weather at the stern, or rear, of the boat, to consult with the steersman. Penelope lined up with the other sailors. Frenchie's long beak jabbed here and there as he gave quiet but forceful orders to the crew. Finally, only Penelope was left.

“Swab the deck.” Frenchie's beak jabbed at the bucket and brush beside the main mast.

Of course
, she thought with a sigh.
I'll start at the bottom.

She took the bucket, dropped it into the ocean and pulled up a full load. Swish! Water ran over the deck. She pushed the brush around with her hooves.

While she worked, Frenchie took turns sending sailors up the rigging, trying out each sailor's skills to see where they would best suit the working of the ship. The sails, from the bottom up, were the main-sail, lower-main-top-sail, upper-main-top-sail, main-gallant, main-royal and main-sky-sail. These sails were repeated on the foremast, toward the front, and the mizzenmast, toward the back. Some sailors did better at the higher altitudes of the sky-sails than others, who were better at handling the heavier sails toward the bottom.

Penelope concentrated on the smooth boards of the deck, trying to keep her anxiety under control. Would he never call her? Would she be allowed aloft today?

Penelope was an awkward climber, and she knew it; she had tried many methods, but without hands and fingers, she had few choices of climbing techniques. She had done chin ups and lifted weights, so she was confident her upper body strength was good enough to haul herself upward by wrapping a line around her foreleg and hooking it into the cleft of her hoof.

Still, she worried. She could brag about her abilities to furl and unfurl, but in reality, her skills aloft were untested.

She pulled up another boring bucket of water and looked longingly at the ropes above her.

“Odd, Beefie, Penelope. Tighten the mainsail.” Frenchie's shiny beak jabbed upward.

Finally. She was going to do the work of a sailor. She was going to be a sailor.

She dumped out the bucket over the rail and eagerly started climbing the rigging along with the other two sailors, the only experienced sailors on their watch. Above her, moaning in the breeze, were acres of canvas.

She was glad her first orders were to take care of the mainsail, and she didn't have to climb far. She climbed with determination—awkward, but making steady progress. But when she was only halfway up, the others had already reached the top of the mainsail. They balanced on the yard, the horizontal wooden crosspiece, and sang a shanty while they pulled on lines. Odd—an odd name for a sailor—was the shanty man; he was skinny, with frizzy, wind-blown hair. It was a shanty Penelope recognized, and she joined in, singing happily as she climbed.

Aloft, it was windier, with a brisk breeze that cooled her brow. By the time she reached the mainsail's yard, though, the job was done, and the other sailors were descending.

Her heart dropped. After two years of dreaming of this moment, she was slow and clumsy. She stood on the mast's yardarm; her hooves couldn't grip the wood like men's toes or a polar bear's paws. Carefully, she balanced and wrapped a line around one foreleg.

The sky, the water, the wind—she soaked in the glorious moment. It smelled wet and salty and sweet. Around her, the sails were alive and crooning. Joy filled her like the wind filled the sails: this is what it was like to be a sailor.

A sudden gust caught her, and her hooves slipped on the smooth wood, plunging her downward. She dangled by her foreleg. Desperately, she swung her hind legs toward the yard, but she was hanging too far away. Then the wind twisted the ropes. No! It wasn't fair! Then, just like that—she was falling.

As she fell, she heard a cry: “Man overboard!”

Penelope fell and fell. She plunged past the warm upper layer into cold water. Panicked, she kicked hard. Kick, kick. Kick, kick. And finally, she bobbed to the surface. She gulped air. The surface was warm and glittery with sunlight. The dunking actually made her queasy stomach feel better. But she couldn't swim. She went down again.

Angrily, she kicked all four legs. It was awkward and tiring, but she found she could keep her head above water. Barely. She didn't make forward progress, but she didn't sink, either.

The ship had raced forward, but she could see it was starting to turn and come around to pick her up. Despair flooded through her. She had only been on the mainsail, and it was a clear day with a gentle breeze.

When she stood dripping before Captain Kingsley, the polar bear drummed his hairy paws on the rails.  “Foolish pig! What would you do if I send you aloft on a stormy day?”

She didn't have an answer. “I stood on the yardarm. The sails were singing for me.”

“No.” Captain Kingsley towered over her. “I should've known better. Hoofed creatures, intelligent or not, are a danger to our ship when they go aloft. You're grounded.”

A great sadness filled her chest. She wanted to be competent aloft; she had tried to be. It was hard to keep the longing from her voice, “From the yardarm, the horizon looked so wide.”

“No. You're the cook's assistant.”

In the tight circle of sailors surrounding them, Penelope saw Santiago's dark face grimace. Her lack of skills reflected on him, too. Of course, he understood her disappointment, but he had the perfect job: navigators seldom had to climb the rigging. It wasn't fair!

Penelope shook herself, and then wiped her nose on her foreleg. Captain Kingsley was right. Her hooves handicapped her, and she was dangerous to herself and the ship.

An hour ago, she had still been blinded by her dreams; she would be an agile sailor, climbing through the rigging as nimbly as a monkey. Instead, she was betrayed by her body. She had a sailor's heart trapped in a pig's thick, clumsy torso; she was mocked by hooves instead of fingers. Bodies give creatures and humans certain possibilities and deny them others. A 300-pound gorilla couldn't dance ballet. A heron couldn't lift a 300-pound block of ice. But Penelope had never thought about her body this way. It hit her now with a heaviness in her muscles; on small sailboats, she and Santiago might manage, but not on larger ships where they had to climb rigging.

But an assistant cook? It was almost more than she could bear. It was hard to give up a dream. She was a crewmember of a tall ship, one of the fastest ships ever made. And on the first day, she was demoted to assistant cook.

Something else struck her, too. Captain Kingsley had known all along what would happen. He had known pigs couldn't climb. He didn't care if she was a sailor or an assistant cook, so long as he got Santiago to search for maps. This, she decided bitterly, was enough repayment for Captain Kingsley; to her, it would balance the scales of justice. She would serve willingly as assistant cook until they returned to Boston, but she owed him nothing else for saving her life. The only thing she would worry about now was the sea serpent question.

In her cabin, Penelope pulled a dry set of clothes from her footlocker.

Santiago came into the cabin, his face dark and worried. “When you fell overboard, I wanted to jump in after you. Frenchie wouldn't let me.”

Shaking her head, Penelope tried to button her clothes. Cricket had replaced many of the hard-to-use buttons with Chinese frog closures; even these were particularly hard today. “You can't swim either. That would've been foolish.”

“I know. But I wanted to do something. Captain Kingsley was harsh.”

“No, he's right. I should never go aloft again.”

Santiago's shoulders sagged. “This isn't how I wanted it to be.”

Penelope shrugged. “There's nothing you can do.” She pushed past him and reported to the cook. She knew she was being short with Santiago, but she needed time to adjust to this change.

Cactus, the cook, was the same small but stalwart porcupine who had served stew for the iceman at Fresh Pond, the one who had wrapped hot water bottles around her as she lay in the sleigh after nearly drowning.

“Tough luck,” he said cheerfully. “But you're still at sea. And we've got lots of work to do. Do you know anything about cooking?”

“I've helped the cook at the Tea Party Inn.”

Cactus tried to make her feel comfortable in the tiny galley, but it was laid out for his compact body and agile hands. Counters were low, and drawers were awkwardly spaced for her. He set her to work peeling potatoes, but she was clumsy with the knife. He set her to stirring the huge pot of stew, instead. Finally, he set her to washing dishes, which was easy since the plates were tin and unbreakable.

That night, after their first full day of sailing, Penelope and Santiago were so tired they threw themselves into the small bunk they shared in the navigator's quarters. At least Penelope didn't have to stay in the damp forecastle with the other crewmen. But it was little comfort. She lay awake remembering how glorious it felt to stand at the top of the mainsail with the wind in her face.

For Penelope, the moment had been too brief.