Chapter 10

Rani fell into bed exhausted. A night out with the crew was draining; they still didn't know she was a woman and pretending to be a man wore her mental and physical reserves. No matter what chore they gave her, she did not dare say that she was not able to do it; they would have laughed and ridiculed her, or worse, start asking why a strapping young lad could not haul a fifty-pound ballast to the deck.

Still, she couldn't complain too loudly. She had an entire goose-down mattress and a heap of cloud-like pillows to fall into at the end of the night, while most of the crew would go home to a thin blanket and a bed free of bugs and lice, if they were lucky. The faintest hint of dawn crept over the window and settled against Rani's eyes. She would still be exhausted the following day and would barely be able to keep her eyes open during piano lessons; Mistress Bowen was sure to rap her hands when she started to doze on the bench, but a light smack was more than worth the effort. Another shipload of people were free, had their lives given back to them. Rani felt good that she could be the one to do it.

As she closed her eyes, she listened to the faint crash of the ocean waves and the cry of the gulls far above the water, the sound that had been in her ears since birth.

Rani fell into a dream.

Standing on the edge of the beach, the sand felt warm and soft beneath her feet. The stars shone above her head, bright jewels on a bed of velvet. The moon hung plump and low in the sky, a ripe fruit waiting to be plucked. A comforting breeze rippled the strands of her hair. At the edge of the surf, she saw a woman wearing a white dress, standing in the waves. The woman lifted her arm and seemed to great and beckon Rani at the same time. The scent of roses mixed with the scent of salt, and Rani saw rose petals covering the surface of the water. She looked down and saw that she held a bouquet of hyacinth and myrtle flowers and knew that she must give them to the woman.

She walked closer until the woman in white seemed to tower over her. Humbly, Rani gave her the offering, and the woman accepted. The woman reached out to touch the cowrie shell necklace around Rani's neck.

"When you are ready, I will come back for this," she said.

She then turned toward the sea and bade Rani to follow her deeper into the water. Rani felt no fear as the waves closed above her head, and she found that she could breathe underwater.

Rani began to swim through the reef in delight. She gazed in wonder at the coral reefs, the multicolored fish, and the tumult of activity in the water. A rainbow of every conceivable color shimmered in the light. Softest pinks and brilliant reds and oranges mingled with muted amber and ivory. Schools of fish raced around her, nibbled at the coral, and kept a wary eye out for predators. Sharks casually cruised by as if they had all the time in the world. Huge balls of intertwined starfish rolled along the bottom, and Rani giggled at their hodgepodge mode of travel. A great turtle flapped its fins as it slowly but steadily made its way across the vast terrain. As the moon rose higher in the sky, Rani felt an immense upwelling in the water. Hundreds of thousands of tiny animals were rising with the moon to come out to play, to eat, to find a mate beneath the brilliance of the light. It felt as though the ocean itself were exhaling, releasing a great force into the world. Rani suddenly felt that she was not simply a spectator of all this dazzling beauty; she experienced a sudden and profound sense of connection with all the life around her.

She wanted to stay down here beneath the waves forever.

But something was wrong. Something snaked its way through the water, like an ugly scar. If the ocean around her were a symphony, then this was a great dissonance, a horrible, screeching tone that marred the music around her. She gazed around her and saw that fish were dying; the sharks who had looked for easy prey swam quickly away, guided by deep instinct to flee the certain death.

Rani felt her tears add to the salt of the ocean as creatures around her began to die: corals, sea sponges, fish; anything caught in the steady stream of black, inky darkness slowly withered and perished.

"Stop! Stop it!" she screamed.

She followed the vile stream until it reached back to the beach. There she saw that the flow came from a large river that led back to land to the city. As she walked along the beach, she felt a despair grip her heart. The black sludge that seemed to infect the river flowed without ceasing, and she felt the death in the ocean in her body and spirit. Rani turned back to the waves and saw the woman in white standing silently against the surf.

"Where does the river lead?" asked the woman.

Rani turned to look inland. The river poured into the waves without ceasing, and she returned her gaze to the woman.

"The ocean?" Rani said.

"No. Your heart," the woman replied.

The dream started to fade, just as though it were breaking up into thousands of tiny bubbles. The edges began to turn into foam, and Rani felt as though she were floating up into the sky. Just before she awoke, she saw the stern face of a man. He had dark purple hair, and brilliant violet eyes; a wide forehead and square cheeks framed an exotic, strange-looking countenance. The ferocity of his expression snatched her breath. In the space of a moment, he was gone, and she awoke.