Passion (16 page)

“I was watching,” Daniel said.

“You—what? You come back to watch?” His past self ung out his arms and his wings. “Is this what you wanted to see?” The depths of his misery were achingly plain.

“This needed to happen, Daniel.”

“Don’t feed me those lies. Don’t you dare. Have you gone back to taking advice from Cam again?”

“No!” Daniel almost shouted at his past self. “Listen: There is a time, not so very far from now, when we wil have a chance to change this game. Something has shifted, and things are di erent. When we have an opportunity to stop doing this over and over. When Lucinda at last might—”

“Break the cycle?” his past self whispered.

“Yes.” Daniel was beginning to feel light-headed. There was one too many of them in the room. It was time for him to go. “It wil take some time,” he instructed, turning back when he reached the window. “But maintain hope.” Then Daniel slipped through the broken window. His words—maintain hope—echoed in his mind as he took o across the sky, deep into the shadows of the night.

NINE

NINE

SO WE BEAT ON

TAHITI • DECEMBER 11, 1775

Łuce found herself balanced on a splintery wooden beam.

It creaked as it tilted slightly to the left, then creaked again as it eased very slowly to the right. The rocking was steady and ceaseless, as if the beam were at ached to a very short pendulum.

A hot wind sent her hair lashing across her face and blew her servant’s bonnet o her head. The beam beneath her swayed again, and her feet slipped. She fel against the beam and barely managed to hug it to herself before she went tumbling down—

Where was she? In front of her was the endless blue of open sky. A darker blue at what must have been the horizon. She looked down.

She was incredibly high up.

A waterlogged pole stretched a hundred feet beneath her, ending in a wooden deck. Oh. It was a mast. Luce was sit ing on the top yard of a very large sailboat.

A very large shipwrecked sailboat, just of the coast of a black-shored island.

The bow had been smashed violently against a cluster of razor-sharp lava rocks that had left it a pulverized mess. The mainsail was shredded: tat ered pieces of tawny canvas apping loosely in the wind. The air smel ed like the morning after a great storm, but this ship was so weathered, it looked like it had been there for years.

Every time the waves rushed up the black-sand shores, water sprayed dozens of feet up from the crevices in the rocks. The waves made the wreck—and the beam Luce clutched—sway so roughly she felt she might be sick.

How was she going to get down? How was she going to get to shore?

“Aha! Look who’s landed like a bird on a perch.” Bil ’s voice broke over the crashing waves. He appeared at the far tip of the ship’s rot ing yard, walking with his arms extended from his sides as if he were on a balance beam.

“Where are we?” Luce was too nervous to make any sudden movements.

Bil sucked in a big lungful of air. “Can’t you taste it? The north coast of Tahiti!” He plopped down next to Luce, kicked out his stubby legs, stretched his short gray arms up, and clasped his hands behind his head. “Isn’t it paradise?”

“I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Nonsense. You just have to find your sea legs.”

“How did we get—” Luce glanced around again for an Announcer. She didn’t see a single shadow, just the endless blank blue of empty skies.

“I took care of the logistics for you. Think of me as your travel agent, and of yourself as on vacation!”

“We’re not on vacation, Bil .”

“We’re not? I thought we were taking the Grand Tour of Love.” He rubbed his forehead, and inty akes showered from his scalp. “Did I misunderstand?”

“Where are Lucinda and Daniel?”

“Hang on.” He hovered in the air in front of Luce. “Don’t you want a lit le history?” Luce ignored him and scooted over toward the mast. She stretched an unsteady foot to the highest of the pegs that spiked out from the mast’s sides.

“Don’t you at least want a hand?”

She’d been holding her breath and trying not to look down as her foot slid o the wooden peg a third time. Final y, she swal owed dryly and reached out to take the cold, rough claw Bil extended to her.

As she took Bil ’s hand, he pul ed her forward, then o the mast entirely. She yelped as the wet wind bat ered her face, sending the skirt of her dress bil owing around her waist. She shut her eyes and waited to plunge through the rot en decking below.

Only she didn’t.

She heard a throosh and felt her body catch in the air. She opened her eyes. Bil ’s stubby wings had bal ooned out and caught the wind. He was supporting her weight with just one hand, carrying her slowly to shore. It was miraculous how nimble he was, how light. Luce was surprised to find herself relaxing—somehow the sensation of flying was natural to her by now.

Daniel. As the air encircled her, the ache to be with him overtook her. To hear his voice and taste his lips—Luce could think of nothing else. What she wouldn’t have given to be in his arms just then!

The Daniel she’d encountered in Helston, however happy he’d been to see her, had not real y known her. Not the way her Daniel did.

Where was he right now?

“Feeling bet er?” Bil asked.

“Why are we here?” Luce asked as they soared over the water. It was so clear she could see inky shadows moving underwater—giant schools of fish, swimming easily, fol owing the shoreline.

“See that palm tree?” Bil pointed forward with his free claw. “The tal est one, third from the break in the sandbar?” Luce nodded, squinting.

“That’s where your father in this life built his hut. Nicest shack on the beach!” Bil coughed. “Actual y, it’s the only shack on the beach. The Brits haven’t even discovered this side of the island yet. So when your pops is o shing, you and Daniel have the place mostly to yourselves.”

“Daniel and I … lived here … together?”

Hand in hand, Luce and Bil touched down on the shore with the soft elegance of two dancers in a pas de deux. Luce was grateful—and a lit le shocked—at how smoothly he’d been able to get her down from the mast of the ship, but as soon as she was rmly on the ground, she withdrew her hand from his grimy claw and wiped it on her apron.

It was starkly beautiful here. The crystal waters washed against the strange and lovely black-sand beaches. Groves of citrus and palm trees leaned over the coast, heavy with bright-orange fruit. Past the trees, low mountains rose up from the mists of the rain forest. Waterfal s cut leaned over the coast, heavy with bright-orange fruit. Past the trees, low mountains rose up from the mists of the rain forest. Waterfal s cut into their sides. The wind down here wasn’t as erce; bet er stil , it was thick with the scent of hibiscus. It was hard to imagine get ing to spend a vacation here, let alone an entire life.

“You lived here.” Bil started walking along the curved shoreline, leaving lit le claw prints in the dark sand. “Your dad, and al ten of the other natives who lived within canoeing distance, cal ed you—wel , it sounded like Lulu.” Luce had been walking quickly to keep pace, bal ing up the layered skirts of her Helston servant’s clothing to keep them from dragging in the sand. She stopped and made a face.

“What?” Bil said. “I think it’s cute, Lulu. Lulululululu.”

“Stop it.”

“Anyway, Daniel was a kind of rogue explorer. That boat back there? Your ace boyfriend stole it from George the Third’s private slip.” He glanced back at the shipwreck. “But it’l take Captain Bligh and his mutinous crew another couple of years to track Daniel down here, and by then … you know.”

Luce swal owed. Daniel would probably be long gone by then, because Lucinda would be long dead.

They’d reached a gap in the line of palm trees. A brackish river owed in swirls between the ocean and a smal inland freshwater pond.

Luce edged along a few at stones to cross the water. She was sweating through her pet icoats and thought about stripping out of her sti ing dress and diving straight into the ocean.

“How much time do I have with Lulu?” she asked. “Before it happens?”

Bil held up his hands. “I thought al you wanted to see was proof that the love you share with Daniel is true.”

“I do.”

“For that, you won’t need more than ten minutes.”

They came upon a short orchid-lined path, which curved onto another pristine beach. A smal thatch-roofed hut rose on stilts near the edge of the light-blue water. Behind the hut, a palm tree shuddered.

Bil perched above her shoulder, hovering in the air. “Check her out.” His stone claw pointed toward the palm.

Luce watched in awe as a pair of feet emerged from the fronds high on the quaking tree trunk. Then a girl wearing lit le more than a woven skirt and an enormous oral lei tossed four shaggy brown coconuts to the beach before scampering down the knobby trunk to the ground.

Her hair was long and loose, catching in its dark strands diamonds of light from the sun. Luce knew the exact feel of it, the way it would tickle her arms as it swayed in waves past her waist. The sun had turned Lulu’s skin a deep golden brown—darker than Luce had ever been, even when she spent a whole summer at her grandmother’s beach house in Biloxi—and her face and arms were etched with dark geometric tat oos. She existed somewhere between ut erly unrecognizable and absolutely Luce.

“Wow,” Luce whispered as Bil yanked her behind the shelter of a shrubby, purple-flowered tree. “Hey—Ow! What are you doing?”

“Escorting you to a safer vantage.” Bil dragged her up again into the air, until they were rising through the canopy of leaves. Once they cleared the trees, he flew her to a high, sturdy branch and plunked her down, and she could see the whole beach.

“Lulu!”

The voice sank though Luce’s skin and straight into her heart. Daniel’s voice. He was cal ing to her. He wanted her. Needed her. Luce moved toward the sound. She hadn’t even noticed that she’d started to rise from her seat on the high branch, as if she could just walk o the treetop and fly to him—until Bil gripped her elbow.

“Precisely why I had to drag your popa’a ass up here. He’s not talking to you. He’s talking to her.”

“Oh.” Luce sank back down heavily. “Right.”

On the black sand, the girl with the coconuts, Lulu, was running. And down the beach, sprinting toward her, was Daniel.

He was shirtless, gorgeously tanned and muscular, wearing only cropped navy-blue trousers that were fraying at the edges. His skin glit ered with seawater, fresh from a dip in the ocean. His bare feet kicked up sand. Luce envied the water, envied the sand. Envied everything that got to touch Daniel when she was stuck up in this tree. She envied her past self the most.

Running toward Lulu, Daniel looked happier and more natural than Luce could ever remember seeing him. It made her want to cry.

They reached each other. Lulu threw her arms around him, and he swept her up, twirling her in the air. He set her back on her feet and showered her with kisses, kissing her fingertips and her forearms, al the way up to her shoulders, her neck, her mouth.

Bil reclined against Luce’s shoulder. “Wake me up when they get to the good stuf ,” he said, yawning.

“Pervert!” She wanted to slug him, but she didn’t want to touch him.

“I mean the tat ooing, gut er-brain. I’m into tats, okay?”

When Luce looked back at the couple on the beach, Lulu was leading Daniel to a woven mat that was spread on the sand not far from the hut. Daniel pul ed a short machete from the belt of his trousers and hacked at one of the coconuts. After a few slashes, he split o the top and handed the rest of it to Lulu. She drank deeply, milk dripping from the corners of her mouth. Daniel kissed them clean.

“There’s no tat ooing, they’re just—” Luce broke o when her past self disappeared into the hut. Lulu reappeared a moment later carrying a smal parcel bound in palm leaves. She unwrapped a tool that looked like a wooden comb. The bristles gleamed in the sun, as if they were needle-sharp. Daniel lay back on the mat, watching as Lulu dipped the comb into a large shal ow seashel fil ed with a black powder.

Lulu gave him a quick kiss and then began.

Starting at his breastbone, she pressed the comb into his skin. She worked quickly, pressing hard and fast, and each time she moved the comb she left a smear of black pigment tat ooed on his skin. Luce could begin to make out a design: a smal checkerboard-pat erned breastplate. It was going to span his entire chest. Luce’s only trip to a tat oo parlor had been once in New Hampshire with Cal ie, who wanted a tiny pink heart on her hip. It had taken less than a minute and Cal ie had bel owed the whole time. Here, though, Daniel lay silently, never making a sound, never moving his eyes o Lulu. It took a long while, and Luce felt sweat trickle down the smal of her back as she watched.

“Eh? How ’bout that?” Bil nudged her. “Did I promise to show you love or did I promise to show you love?”

“Sure, they seem like they’re in love.” Luce shrugged. “But—”

“But what? Do you have any idea how painful that is? Look at that guy. He makes get ing inked look like being caressed by a soft breeze.” Luce squirmed on the branch. “Is that the lesson here? Pain equals love?”