Chapter 31
Rylan Cameron
Call sign: Minnow
Sleep evaded Rylan once more, burning his eyelids and twisting just out of reach. He drew instead, sketching for hours, and
underlined passages of his beat-up Jules Verne novel. Pirate slept beside him, occasionally rousing to make biscuits on Rylan’s
thigh. Rylan didn’t want to think about what Alejandro had said, that the cord had been cut since the beginning of the trip,
that it was meant to protect ourselves. He didn’t want to think about what they needed protection from or how tiny that speck of land looked in the middle of the
ocean. All he could stand to think about was his drawing.
So he drew.
“Perfume is the soul of the flower, and sea-flowers have no soul.”
He drew a garden underwater, azaleas drowned and drifting.
“Steam seems to have killed all gratitude in the hearts of sailors.”
He drew a steamship running over a sailboat and splintering it to pieces.
“We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”
He drew a body folded in a freezer, barnacles blooming over its eyes and mouth, seaweed snaking its claim across the concave chest, and salt water loosening sinew until the corpse spread like unwound string.
Rylan’s wrist ached in protest. He needed sleep but could not command it to come to him. He glanced at Tia, mouth agape and
breathing steadily in her bed.
Rylan flipped the page of his sketchbook. He set aside 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and picked up a book about sea monsters through the ages. He opened to a random page and skimmed it as he sketched.
The Blue Men of Minch were blue-skinned people in Scottish myths who lurked beneath the surface in the hopes of dragging down
passing ships. They were also called storm kelpies for their ability to summon tempests and were thought to be angels who’d
fallen from the heavens and landed in the seas.
A blue man took shape on Rylan’s paper. He was slender and ribbony, his eyes huge like the creatures in the deepest parts
of the sea. He was creeping down the hallway of The Old Eileen, leaving a trail of salt water with each step.
There was one way to save yourself from the Blue Men of Minch, Rylan read as he shaded water droplets on the monster’s skin.
The creatures often called out lines of poetry to the men aboard their ships, and the captain would be tasked with completing
the verse. If he could not, the creatures sank the ship.
Rylan listened for a fallen angel’s poetry through the door to his cabin. The pain in his arm reminded him that the Blue Men
of Minch had come to life in his sketchbook and nowhere else. He had no reason to believe in actual monsters.
Rylan snapped his sketchbook shut and forced himself out the door and to the companionway. He focused on the pain in his arm.
That was real. The Blue Men of Minch were not.
The night that greeted Rylan up on deck was muggy.
He realized he’d sweated through his T-shirt, which stuck to his chest. He massaged his palm and looked to see who was steering in the cockpit.
Francis.
“Couldn’t sleep, son?”
They were alone, the two of them. The rest of the family and crew were asleep. Or dead. Rylan took a deep breath. He didn’t
need to be scared of Francis. Francis was the person protecting them from . . . from what, exactly, Rylan didn’t want to know.
His father waved him over, and he approached the cockpit, cradling his drawing. “Guess not.”
“Keep watch with me, then.”
Rylan crouched down on the cockpit bench and watched his father steer in silence. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d
been somewhere this quiet. Even diving underwater had a constant sound to it.
“When I learned how to sail, it wasn’t nearly this nice,” Francis said.
Rylan rubbed at his tendons and let his father talk.
“It was an all-boys trip across the Atlantic, meant to whip us into shape a bit. I got into some trouble when I was around
your age, and my family pooled what little they had into straightening me out. My father was a proud man, even though he didn’t
have a dime to back it up.
“So I worked like hell and learned to navigate and swab the deck. Felt like a sixteenth-century military draft. The food was
awful, sawdust bread and dried beef. I got so seasick in the beginning, I could hardly get out of my bunk to stand watch with
my team.”
Rylan waited patiently for the point. Something like but I persevered and look at me now. Or maybe it’s a hard life at sea, so don’t think you’re the exception. Or even this is my roundabout explanation for where I’m taking you all.
Francis was fond of pounding life lessons into his stories.
“One night I belly-crawled out on deck to vomit my dinner over the side. We didn’t wear life jackets all the time, so I was
just soaked and shivering, holding onto the lifeline with one hand and pushing my hair back with the other. I thought I was
going to die I felt so sick. I was also a touch dramatic back then.” Francis smiled, and Rylan caught what he didn’t say.
Dramatic like you.
“Anyway, when there was nothing left to hurl, I took in my surroundings. I’d been on the boat for days, but it was the first
time I really looked at the water. And I saw it was glowing.”
Rylan stayed still and kept eye contact whenever Francis looked over.
Francis shook his head in wonder. “The white water that broke across the bow was glowing. Found out later it was bioluminescent
phytoplankton, provoked by the moving boat. From then on I made a point to look around, really take it all in. I still remember all the shitty stuff from that trip if I think back on it, but what comes to mind when I
recall where sailing started for me, where life started for me, I see the bioluminescence. I see porpoises swimming in a lightning
storm. I see how high the ocean can raise a ship, and how deep she can drag it down. I see what she’s given me to make me
into the man I am now.”
Francis went quiet for a moment in that way older people sometimes did, as if arrested by a thing that happened long ago.
Rylan wished he could meet his father when he’d been seventeen, before he was rich or successful, when he’d only been a boy
on a boat.
He wondered if they could have been friends.
Francis faced him. “Power and potential. That’s what I see when I look at the ocean, and it’s what I see when I look at you.”
Rylan met his father’s eyes, blue like a Perlemoen crab’s. Did he really see power or much of anything when he looked at Rylan? Rylan wanted it to be true, even if he felt like an impostor. He wanted to be what Francis imagined he was.
Francis waved a hand around in the air. “So look around, son. The sea isn’t the end of the world. It’s most of it.”
Out of habit, Rylan obeyed. He looked around.
Sails brimmed. A fine layer of crystalized salt had encrusted the railing like tiny stalagmites on the mouth of a cave. Rylan
dragged a finger through the salt, leaving a trail on plain wood.
He peered down into the water and did a double take.
Francis chuckled behind him. “Go to the bow. Take a good, long look.”
Rylan laughed despite himself and rushed to the front of the boat, leaning as far out over the ocean as he dared.
Luminescent blue water pushed up against the bow. Rylan wondered for a moment if this is what the Blue Men of Minch actually
looked like, if their lore about being fallen angels meant that they were actually toppled stars that had collected in the
water to give The Old Eileen a gleaming cloak.
Of course, that was ridiculous. Like Francis said, these were phytoplankton, dinoflagellates, if Rylan remembered correctly.
They shone in response to movement in case a predator was attacking. The glow was a last-ditch effort to attract an even bigger
predator to scare away the first.
Rylan tried to imagine how the boat looked from above, flying on a carpet of stars. He stayed there, grinning like an idiot
at the glowing water, until his eyes stung and he returned to the cockpit.
He felt . . . relieved. For a precious moment, he wasn’t worrying about his father or his sister or the dead. He just thought
about how nice it was that ocean water sometimes glowed.
“It’s something, huh?” Francis clapped his back.
“Yeah.” Rylan hesitated, feeling like he should say more but coming up empty. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Francis pulled him inward then, an ambush embrace. He mussed Rylan’s hair and patted his back in a masculine affirmation.
“My boy,” he murmured, and Rylan realized he didn’t know the last time he had hugged his father.
He screwed up his face and let himself lean into Francis’s chest. It was safer to be this close. It meant he was protected.
Francis’s hand landed on Rylan’s narrow shoulder. “I cannot wait for you to see where we’re going.”
“Where are we going, Dad?”
Francis held him at arm’s length. They were the same height now, and Rylan was still growing. He’d be taller than him someday.
It was a strange thought to have.
“It’s going to be an adventure, Rylan. Our whole lives are about to change.”
Their whole lives?
Rylan stiffened, his body reacting before he had the foresight to remain calm. Miraculously, Francis hadn’t noticed. He kept
talking. Almost . . . nervously?
“Just wait. It’ll be an adjustment at first, but where we’re headed is beautiful. Finally we can get away from all the noise,
right? We’ll dive every day, watch the sun set into the sea every night.”
Francis seemed thrilled. He was still speaking, but Rylan couldn’t process the words anymore because, between them, Rylan
finally heard the answer to the question. Not to where they were going, exactly, but why. He had heard the same fanciful language from his twin when she explained her plan to leave.
“This was never a vacation. You’re running away . . .” Rylan breathed, and Francis went silent. He was still holding Rylan
by his shoulder, and his grip tightened, fingers into bone. Rylan inhaled sharply and struggled to remain rooted in the present
moment, fighting not to trip into memory.
“I want you to understand something, son.”
He’s not denying it.
Rylan couldn’t move. Francis looked up to the sky as if for guidance, then pushed Rylan down onto the cockpit bench. Rylan’s
knees buckled and he folded. Francis kept one hand on the wheel even as he trained all his focus on Rylan.
“The life we live is a privileged one. A truly unique one. How many fathers can give a world like this to their sons and wives
and daughters?”
Rylan was nodding even though Francis hadn’t been asking him a question. Francis placed a hand on the back of Rylan’s neck,
and he stopped.
“You don’t get to be extraordinary if you only operate in the ordinary,” Francis continued. “Simple as that.”
“I know. I know, I know,” Rylan said, unable to break out of a loop. He couldn’t let himself be too emotional. Too dramatic.
But suddenly he couldn’t shut up, like something had short-circuited inside him. Francis moved his hand over Rylan’s mouth.
“Shh, shh, shh. I know you do. That’s why I’m telling you this. Smart kid. Ordinary people will never understand the lengths
it takes to achieve the extraordinary. How can you be expected to comprehend the sun if you’ve only ever seen a fire in a
cave?”
He’s running away. He’s taking us with him. He’s trying to protect us from something.
That means we’re never going back.
Rylan tried to nod, but Francis kept his head from moving. “Don’t be scared.” He withdrew his hand, but Rylan still held his breath.
“The Cameron family is the thing I love most fiercely in this world,” Francis said, holding eye contact with Rylan. “Built
it with my bare hands. Ordinary people will not be the reason it falls.”
He extended a hand. Rylan took it, and Francis pulled him smoothly to his feet.
“Let’s get you back to bed.”