Chapter 22
I expect to feel something, walking up the beach into Kielstraat as the midday sun shines weakly above. This moment so long in coming. But I don’t feel anything except empty, numb, like my insides have been scooped out too and fed to the sharks that have patrolled the tides all morning.
Despite the vastness of the landscape around us, the buildings of the settlement are set close together as if they are flesh and blood and need to huddle together for warmth.
They all look the same, rectangular, unadorned structures of raw wood topped with shallowly pitched roofs varying only in size.
August points them out as we pass—a storehouse, a kitchen, an infirmary, bunkhouses—and I half listen, drained with physical exhaustion and a formless, foggy kind of fear.
The cold doesn’t bother me much now after the exhausting labor of cutting-in, but I feel the the edge of its teeth and know it will be biting at nightfall.
The pathways between the buildings have drainage gullies dug out alongside so we can walk without our feet sinking into the spongy, half-frozen earth.
Men and women move among the buildings carrying lumber or barrels or sacks clattering with whalebone.
Some I vaguely recognize from back in Kirkrell; more are strangers.
Pale, stocky Sollish; dark-eyed and dark-haired Nunak; grim-mouthed Abbonish.
Even so, the place feels empty, depopulated.
Kielstraat feels like nothing more than it is, a hastily constructed skeleton of a port town, gaping open for people to swarm in and money to pour out.
August shows me to the small shanty I’m to share with my siblings, Josephine, and Teuila, suggesting I wash my face and change my clothes, then he has something to show me. Too tired to argue, I trudge in, leaving him waiting outside.
The shanty is plain inside, with bunk beds, a small washroom, chests of drawers.
I see that all our trunks have been brought in, and Kit’s books are strewn over one bed, Lydia’s clothes over another.
In the midst of the clothes—like they were putting them away before getting distracted—Lydia and Josephine are kissing, giggling as their hands wander.
They jump and break apart at the sound of the door closing, turning to face me. Josephine grins ruefully, and a furious blush spreads over Lydia’s face. “Annie,” she splutters.
“Hi. Sorry.” I cough, looking around as if this spartan room is the most fascinating place I’ve ever been. “Um, where’s Kit?”
“In the dining hall with Teuila and Zimri,” Josephine says, overly chipper.
“He’s fine. Everything’s fine.” Lydia’s brow has drawn down, like I might have something to say about her taking up with one of the Whistler crew. She doesn’t know I have precious little ground to stand on there.
She holds Josephine’s hand, and it makes my throat tight. I’m happy for them, but it throws into sharp relief the shambolic mess of my own love life. August is waiting outside and all I want is to be away from him. I loved him so much—part of me still does—but I don’t trust him anymore.
And where do I go from such a place? How can we have any sort of life together without trust?
I bustle over to my trunk and open it. “Maybe you could lock the door next time,” I suggest as I check to make sure that my gloves and stock of whaleblood are accounted for.
“Or you could knock.” But there’s the curl of a laugh in Lydia’s voice now that she knows I’m not angry.
“Lydia,” Josephine says, affectionately reproving. “We’ll be more careful. Annie, are you okay after the cutting-in?”
I glance up at her as I grab a change of clothes.
Her dark eyes are full of concern and sincerity.
She came off the shift at the beach maybe an hour before I left.
She and Lydia are both scrubbed clean, every trace of the cutting-in gone.
All I want to do is the same. Wash until every speck of blood is forgotten and fall into bed.
“Don’t worry about me,” I say brightly as I retreat to the washroom and pull the privacy screen around myself. “I’m not staying.”
A ponderous silence from the main room, then Lydia’s footsteps approach the washroom. “You don’t have to leave on our account, Annie,” she says with no trace of sarcasm, only concern. “You must be tired.”
Just as well there’s no mirror in here. I must look terrible for Lydia to be so sincere. “August is waiting. He’s going to show me around the settlement.”
“Is that a good idea, do you think?”
Unease fills me at her tone, cautious and cool. I haven’t told her everything about August, certainly not about him having designs on my life. But she could have heard something from Josephine or another member of the Whistler crew. Or she can just read the tension in me.
I know Lydia is strong, capable; I know she wants me to confide in her. But the understanding I’ve been pushing down for so long, that August is dangerous, is surfacing.
He makes me feel like I’m alone in a whaleboat, floating toward a bank of fog.
There’s still a part of me that believes something beautiful might lie beyond it.
That I can navigate whatever waves come, whatever weather.
But I know that’s not true. And I don’t want to bring my sister in with me. The less she knows, the better.
When I emerge from the washroom, Josephine is tactfully pretending to be absorbed in one of Kit’s books. It gives me the opportunity to grab Lydia’s arm and whisper in her ear, “Remember what Papa said. Guard your heart.”
Lydia’s face falls. “Oh, Annie, don’t you understand? Papa got it backward.” Suddenly she looks inexpressibly sad. “Love isn’t what breaks your heart. Love is the only way we survive any of this.”
Outside, August doesn’t lead me back to his own cabin as I half expect. Instead we walk inland, away from the settlement and the smoke.
“Where are we going?” I ask after what feels like ten minutes, though I can’t be sure.
The midday sky shines a delicate blue-white, and the low black mountains rise up before us, tundra stretching out endlessly to our left and right.
Without the packed-earth paths and meager shelter of the buildings, my boots sink into the half-frozen earth and the wind nips at my face.
Lydia’s words echo in my head, the almost-desperation in her tone. Love is the only way we survive any of this.
More and more with every step, I think she might be right.
For years I grappled with the curse, and my love for Lydia, for Kit—and, yes, for August—kept me alive.
Maybe he never loved me back, not truly, but it doesn’t matter.
I loved them and that was my lifeline. My love gave me just enough to hold on to.
And not just my love, but others’ for me. Silas’s voice echoes in my head. I stayed because of you.
I don’t know if that’s love, exactly. But I do know that Silas has put my well-being ahead of his own, again and again. He’s told me the truth at every turn.
“Somewhere I’ve wanted to show you ever since we left home.” August maintains pace a half step ahead of me, somehow managing to avoid the mud. “I know the main part of Kielstraat can seem unprepossessing, but there is beauty here.”
He’s not wrong. The landscape isn’t featureless, as I first thought.
There is beauty to it, if a harsh, ascetic kind of beauty.
Colors emerge in the scrubby grass, streaks of rust red and dull green.
Veins of snow running down the black mountains gleam in the sun.
But for all that, the anxiety in me only grows as we approach the foothills, the ground getting steeper, less marshy and more rocky.
I’ve never been alone with him like this.
On the Heralder and back in Kirkrell, even when it was just him and me behind a closed door, there were others around—watchmen on deck, siblings in other rooms. Then, we had to be quiet so as to not be overheard by others.
Here, I could shout as loud as my lungs would allow me and no one else would hear.
“I have to talk to you about something,” I say, feeling like there are rocks in my stomach. Up ahead, curls of what look like smoke rise from the earth. Not thick and black like the smoke from the try-pots but white and wispy. Another part of the settlement?
August looks back over his shoulder at me, blue eyes keen. “Oh?” With his voice raised above the wind, he sounds younger than usual, boyish almost.
I’ve delayed long enough. Nothing to do but get it out. “We need to end whaling.”
The spring wind whistles; my heart thumps. But August just keeps walking. I stand there for a second, then scramble after him. “August, did you hear me?”
I don’t know what reaction I expected, but this wasn’t it. I swallow and plant my feet carefully with each step. We come to the top of a slope and my breath catches as what must be our destination comes into view.
A pool of water, irregular in shape, splays out at the base of the hills. Long grass and bushes sway at its edges, more green than anywhere else in Kielstraat. Strange colors shimmer within as steam curls from its surface. Turquoise and rust red and oil black.
“What is this?” I ask, for a moment forgetting our conversation.
His smile strikes me like lightning, like the first time I ever saw it. “Just one of Kielstraat’s many secrets.” He takes my hand, his glove around mine, and pulls me down toward its surface. “I thought you could use a break after the hunt. The cutting-in.”
My chest goes tight as we pick our way down toward the water’s edge.
I can feel the warmth of it carried on the breeze, smell it, strange and sulfuric but not unpleasant.
Idyllic, almost. Like there should be birdsong.
But there’s just the wind and, in the distance, the smoke of the settlement smudging the horizon.