THERE WAS seriously no way that Artie was answering that question. And his too-kind voice didn’t fool her. He was digging for information.
He’d already dug too much. She’d even told him her name—her original name that her mother had given her—and simply because he acted friendly when he asked. She wasn’t going to fall for that again.
She hunched over her bread, chewing. Good bread. She was so hungry; in the past couple of days, since she’d arrived in the capital, she’d been able to pilfer bits of food from different places, but there would never be enough food in the entire world to satisfy her. Even when her mom was alive, they’d often gone hungry because her mom was too sick to work in the fields. And then they’d met that nice-seeming, funny, loud fisherman from the village near where they’d been staying, and he’d taken an interest in helping them, and he’d eventually married Artie’s mom. They’d had enough food for a while. Mostly fish. Fish and, soon, the fisherman’s fists. But there was food.
But since . . . since her mom had died, she’d felt constant hunger. Not just for her mother. She was hungry for lots of things—things she wasn’t going to tell this Putnam boy about. A kid who looked like everything in his life had been handed to him on a delicate fruit plate with a little jewel-encrusted spoon. A kid who probably had all kinds of family and friends to love him and take care of him. Friends who wouldn’t return him to his awful stepdad if he tried to leave.
Artie shrugged to herself. No need to get to know him just because he happened to have stolen the same boat she had. She was on her own—finally, miraculously—and she would stay that way.
She ate the entire hunk of bread in silence. Putnam ate, too, slowly. He ate only about half his bread and put the rest back in the waterproof food sack. “We can catch fish for supper,” he said, “so don’t worry about finishing your bread.”
The light was slanting almost sideways now, as the sun approached the western horizon. All the planes on Putnam’s face stood out sharply, and his curls glistened. His skin shone; his teeth almost glowed. He was too healthy.
He leaned far over the lip of the boat and washed his hands and face, whooping a little at how cold the water was. “Wow, that’ll wake you up. I think if we decide to bathe or swim, we’ll shiver.” He dried off his face on his clean shirt. Then he sat and faced her. “I’ll start,” he said. “I’ll tell you why I’m out on the ocean.”
“I didn’t ask.”
He looked startled for a brief second, then said, “But maybe you’ll find it interesting. And maybe you’ve heard something that can help me. You’re from Tathenn, right? You’re not from the south end by any chance, are you?”
She glared. She was not going to let him weasel information out of her so that he could turn the boat around and return her to where she came from.
He shrugged, as if he hadn’t really expected an answer. Then he said, “I’ve been sent to investigate the southern sea and find out what’s causing the water to go bad.” He paused. “You know the water is turning salty, right? It’s worst on the south shore of Tathenn.”
She didn’t bother to hide her eye-roll. “That’s been obvious to everyone on the Islands for a while now. On the south shore we don’t even drink ocean water anymore unless we run out of rainwater.”
“So you are from the south end. Well, it’s even worse now. We’ve been heading south all night. Taste the water.”
She narrowed her eyes at him but didn’t move. She’d try the water later, when he wasn’t hovering around, watching her.
“Anyway, I’m going to figure out what the problem is.”
“And then?”
“And then . . .” He ran his hand over his head, shrugging. “Stop it, I guess. Fix it.”
“Fix it.” What did he think he could do? He was only a kid.
“Yes.” Suddenly he jutted out his chin. “If I can’t fix it myself, I can at least bring people back to the—the problem, whatever it is, and tell them what’s wrong. I’m going to figure it out.”
She barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes again—and only because he looked so . . . worried all of a sudden, like he wanted to be a hero but deep down wasn’t sure he could be. Like there was a tiny weasel of self-doubt buried inside him somewhere, twisting to get out.
And that made her like him. Just a little.
“So,” he said. “Why are you running away?” He grinned. “You can tell me. I won’t turn you in or anything.”
And, Artie told herself, this is why you don’t make friends with people. They are all of them way too prying and then they don’t believe you. There was so much of her story she didn’t want to talk about—didn’t want to remember. She closed down her face, turned her back on him, and stared north, to where they’d been. She stayed frozen that way until she was sure he knew they were done talking.
THE REST OF THE DAY passed in almost silence, but she couldn’t ignore this boy forever—the boat was too small for that, and he was way too friendly and kept talking to her. Being nice. It was weird.
The first night she didn’t sleep—she couldn’t get beyond a light doze with him nearby, snoring just feet away from her. All night she drifted off, pinched herself awake, and daydreamed, hunched in the corner of the cabin.
The next morning Putnam stretched when he woke, smiling and wrinkling his nose in the light that streamed in the window of the little room. He rubbed his head with his palm, smoothing his tight curls. Then he looked closely at Artie as if studying her, and said, “I think I’m going to sit on the front of the boat for a couple of hours, just . . . catching the breeze and thinking. If you want to sleep longer, you should shut the door to keep out the wind and catch a few more winks. Oh, and you’ll probably need to latch the door so it stays shut—you don’t want it to slam open while you’re sleeping.”
She nodded, exhausted, and he rolled up his blanket, stored it neatly in the corner, and left, shutting the door carefully behind him. After she’d locked it, she fell to the floor and dropped into a long sleep that lasted until the sun was streaming into the opposite window. She still felt a little tired—and stiff beyond belief—but knew it was past time to get up.
Putnam sat in the front of the boat, arms wrapped around himself. The breeze was cool, and he’d left his warm clothing in the locked cabin. The food was stored in the cabin, too—he hadn’t eaten all day.
But he didn’t say any of that. “You’re up! It’s been a great day so far—it’s good that you can catch some of it.”
“Sorry.”
“What? No—you needed the sleep. Hiking up from the southern part of the island to the capital was probably exhausting.” His eyes flicked over to her, then back out to sea. “I figure we can eat dinner and then I’ll drop anchor for a bit and we can wash up—I know I need a swim.”
Artie suddenly could feel all the sleep and dirt on her body and clothes. Was he trying to say that she stank? That she needed a bath?
Then she shrugged to herself. What did she care what he thought? “You’d be grimy too if you’d traveled so far.” Then she stopped, horrified at herself. She hadn’t meant to speak out loud.
“Exactly,” said Putnam. “And I haven’t walked nearly as far as you. I mean, I assume you’ve walked a long distance. I just stepped out of a tent and onto a boat. I can’t believe how tough you are.” He said it like he was impressed, not repulsed.
She didn’t know how to respond—what did one say to something that sounded like a compliment? “I’ll get the food.”
“That’s great. I was thinking that we’ll finish the scrap of bread that’s left and then move on to the plums. We have only a couple days’ worth of fresh food—but there’s plenty more in the ocean.” He paused. “I hope.”
They swam after dinner, on opposite sides of the boat. Artie was pretty sure Putnam was stripping down and washing clothes while he swam—he brought a smooth stone with him and some seaweed soap they’d found on the boat—but she kept a layer of clothes on, rubbing them with her hands as best she could and hoping they’d come clean in the water. Her skin, still raw and bruised, she avoided scrubbing, merely wiping it gently with an edge of cloth.
After she felt clean, she climbed back on the boat and toweled off as much as she could with a blanket. Then she went back in the cabin, shivering. The water was comfortable, but the bite in the air after leaving the water was suddenly sharp. Inside the cabin she turned on the heater and sat close to it.
“What’s that song?” asked Putnam, entering the cabin. The blanket was draped over his shoulders, and he was carrying his wet shirt.
“Nothing,” she said. She hadn’t even realized she’d been singing.
“Isn’t that one of the island songs I heard around the bonfires?”
She shrugged.
“You have a really nice voice.”
She shrugged again and looked away. She and her mother used to sing all the time, embroidering the songs they knew and stitching in new words or notes to suit the occasion. Sometimes they made up songs, whole cloth. But since her mom’s death, Artie didn’t sing. She had at first, but it had irritated her stepfather, especially if the fishing hadn’t been good that day, or if he’d had an argument with someone, or if the weather was bothersome, or if he was short of money—or any number of other things that might go wrong. She was never sure when those bad days would be, so she’d stopped singing except when she was sure she was alone.
But here, somehow, she’d forgotten.
“Never mind,” Putnam said, and she realized he had probably been waiting for a response from her. He draped his shirt over a hook near the heater and sat down opposite Artie. “It feels good to be clean, doesn’t it?” He peered at her. “Your face is bruised.”
He waited like he thought she would say something. Confess something.
The room felt like a trap.
The door was behind her. She could leave. She would go sit outside in the cold.
Putnam continued. “The spots on your arms—were you in a fire?” Then, before she could do anything, while she was frozen in shock that he would mention the scars, he said, “Because my dad has scars, too—from the fire when I was little. After my first mom died.”
She sat very still. He wasn’t really asking about her. He just wanted to talk about himself. That was okay. That was something she could handle.
“He has an enormous scar on one arm,” said Putnam, “not lots of small ones like yours. And when that one healed, it made his arm look wrinkled, like really, really old skin. But he has some little scars on the other arm, like yours, where his arm didn’t get burned completely, but ash fell on him, and it made dots. When his arm healed, it looked like someone drew little white dots all over.”
She nodded. He could talk about his dad all day as long as he didn’t ask her questions.
“Like yours,” Putnam said. “They’re faded now, but I think they must have looked like yours when they were newer. Dots all over. So is that what happened? A fire?”
She yanked the sleeves down and leaned toward the heater, hunching over her knees. “Hot oil,” she said. “From a pot. It splashed on me when it fell.” That was mostly true. Her stepdad had thrown the pot. And he had been sorry afterward.
Putnam needed to stop now. She needed him to stop.
“I never realized—I never thought about how my dad’s burns must have looked when I was a baby.” Putnam leaned toward her to see better, and she shrugged even deeper into her clothing. “Your arms look like stars. Like there’s a constellation there.” He paused. “How did the pot fall? What happened?”
She stood and went outside, even as she could hear Putnam in the background saying, “Don’t go. Artie. I didn’t mean to offend you. The burns marks are . . . pretty. What I’m trying to say is . . .”
The ocean roared in her ears, like she was an empty shell, and she couldn’t hear anything else.
The scars weren’t pretty. There was nothing pretty about what had happened. If she let herself, she knew she could still feel the oil splashing on her, and she thought she would feel it all her life.
A few minutes later Putnam stood next to her, his wet head and trousers, warm from the cabin, now steaming in the cold outside air. “Artie. I’m sorry. I promise not to talk about it anymore. In fact, I won’t talk at all if you don’t want me to. Please come back inside, or you’ll catch your death of cold.”
The wind bit her. She went back inside and sat down. They sat for a long time, until Artie was almost completely dry.
Finally she said, “Catch your death of cold?”
“Something my dad says.”
“You sound like an old man.”
“I’ll try not to say that again.”
“It’s okay. It’s just—do you hang out with other kids? Or only with old people like parents?”
“I’m busy learning how to be the next king,” said Putnam. “I mean, I have friends, I get invited to a lot of things, but it’s because I’m the next ruler. I don’t have a good friend, like you could tell everything to . . .” He trailed off, looking embarrassed. “I’ll get supper. The plums are a little too ripe, and the water is kind of salty. But I’m hungry enough that it will taste great. I bet you are, too.”
She nodded to show that she was hungry, too. Pulling her knees in to her chest, listening to Putnam rummage in the bags behind her, her eyes drifted to her arms. Carefully she pushed up a sleeve and squinted in the dim light. The white scars that dotted her arm did look like stars. They did. She could see it now.
What constellation might they be? She found shapes and traced them with her free hand: A bird pecking for a worm. A small backpack. A flower going to seed. Or maybe the constellation was something mythological: A winged horse rearing up before taking flight. A sea monster stretching its tentacles in all directions. A bear reaching for something up high, maybe honey in a tree. There was so much there, in her arm, stars and planets and galaxies and maybe even entire universes.
“Ready?”
She looked up to see Putnam, still draped in his blanket like it was a king’s cape, holding a plate of food.
She shoved the sleeve back down to hide the burns—which is what they were.
No. Not ready.