The waves came to her in a dream. She felt her body, buoyant and lithe, pulled over them, floating just above the water, like a wandering albatross, her wings spread wide. Then she felt herself lifted up high on a burst of air until she was riding in the crow’s nest of an ancient schooner. Dark clouds obscured the sky and sank so low she could almost touch them. She looked down and watched waves breaching the deck of her boat, until it was consumed entirely, the mast disappearing into black water. Penguins porpoised over the waves surrounding her, hundreds of them, circling in formation. She could feel them watching her. She wanted to dive in, to follow them to wherever they went when they left her shores. She was not afraid of the darkness, not afraid of drowning. She was ready to be with them, at last in their world, just below the water line.
When Angela opened her eyes, she was in a dark room, alone in a single bed. She turned her head to the side. The bed across the narrow aisle was empty, the sheets twisted in knots, remnants of her first night aboard. The night before, Aeneas had paraded her through the ship’s hallways, lined with crew members greeting him like a hero returned from battle. Angela felt like Aeneas’s trophy, or his captive; all eyes were upon her, curious and probing. Back at Punta Verde, she’d always dressed to blend into the landscape; here, there was no blending in. As she watched the crew members study her, she realized how difficult it would be to fit into shoes that she’d rarely worn—she wasn’t accustomed to the role of girlfriend or lover, let alone the girlfriend or lover of an eco-terrorist. And yet by association she had now become one of them—an activist and a pirate, on a wave-tossed descent to the bottom of the planet.
They had lingered in the galley after dinner, celebrating Aeneas’s return over glasses of vodka. Angela sat next to D. J., the second mate and ship navigator. A clean-cut man in his thirties, he spoke quietly about coordinates and dates, and Aeneas assured him they would make up for lost time.
But it clearly wasn’t meant to be a working evening. By his third glass of vodka, Aeneas’s voice and mannerisms amplified; he grew more animated, holding up his penguin-scarred hands up for all to see, standing to recite a poem:
Will ye come down the water-side,
To see the fishes sweetly glide
Beneath the hazels spreading wide,
And the moon that shines full clearly.
As his words segued into song, members of the crew joined in, as if this were a longtime family ritual. Eventually the entire room echoed with melancholy voices, and Angela was the only silent one, made even more self-conscious by Aeneas’s eyes on her as he sang.
While waters wimple to the sea,
While day blinks in the sky so high,
Till clay-cold death shall blind my eye,
Ye I shall be thy dearie.
Song had followed song until the bottle was empty, and Aeneas led her again through the maze of narrow hallways, rooms, and stairways to his cabin—to their cabin, he called it.
“I don’t even know your real name,” Angela said.
“It’s Neil Cameron,” he replied. “But few of us go by our real names, particularly those of us with names on wanted lists. It’s safer that way, for everyone.”
“What about my name?”
“How about we call you Pingüina?”
Just then she’d wondered what she’d gotten herself into, and the fear must have shown in her eyes because Aeneas pulled her to him and hugged her tight. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You are safe here, and I am not leaving you. We’re a team.”
When he kissed her, she could forget the chaos and doubts of the last twelve hours, the momentary panic attacks about having abandoned her one and only career. His lips were warm and they relaxed her, and she had not felt relaxed for many years. How could she when a half million penguins needed to be protected? How could she waste a moment on a kiss when there was tagging to be done, data to gather? The few old friends who visited her at Punta Verde used to tell her how they envied her simple life, as if it were a vacation. But not once in her fifteen years at Punta Verde had she ever taken time off to read a book or spend the day in town or sleep in. Maybe if she had, she wouldn’t be here now.
The bed was small, but they made the most of it. His back against the wall, sideways across the bed, feet propped against the other bed across the aisle. Her straddling him. Their noises camouflaged by the engine below. The movement of the ship bringing them together, then apart, then together again, in a slow rocking unison that made her forget everything else.
But this morning, the waves were no longer so generous. Angela sat up and looked out the small window and saw a clear sky, wind-blown waves—no land. Suddenly the boat dropped beneath her, and she fell back into bed and pressed her eyes shut.
Humans may have come from the sea, Angela reflected, but that was a long time ago, and bodies have a short-term memory. It wasn’t her first time on open ocean, and she knew her body would resist the motion, in vain, before finally adapting. But this time, it was not only her body that would have to adapt. She found herself listening for the sound of penguins calling out to one another, for the gentle scratching of wings against the floor below her feet, for the steady drumbeat of wind against the single-paned window of her trailer. Now she could hear only the straining roar of the ship’s engine somewhere far below.
She stood, uneasily at first, and emerged from her room, arms held up to brace herself against the door frame. She squeezed past a large cluttered map table and an array of radios and terminals. Maps carpeted the linoleum floor. She stepped over them and through a doorway, them pulled herself up a flight of stairs to the bridge.
In the middle of the room was a chest-high control console, and to its left stood Aeneas, his face pressed to the glass. He seemed lost in the tempest of white-capped waves ahead of him.
D. J. stood behind the controls at the wheel. To his right, another crew member, a young man wearing a baseball cap and a tattoo of a skull and crossbones on the back of his neck, studied a radar screen. Angela considered introducing herself, but she didn’t want to break their concentration.
“Steady one five,” Aeneas mumbled.
D. J. repeated the command rapid-fire, hands loose on the small wooden wheel, so tiny in comparison to the ship that it looked almost ornamental.
Angela took a few tentative steps toward Aeneas, not wanting to disrupt the quiet, the sense of peace that filled this warm windowed room overlooking a wild sea. “Morning,” she said softly.
Aeneas turned and winked. He did not make a move toward her, so she followed his lead and stayed where she was.
“We’re well into the Drake Passage now,” he said. “You’re holding up pretty well.”
“It’s not my first time across.”
“Oh, yes. I forgot. You were once the entertainment on a cruise ship.”
“They use the term ‘naturalist.’”
“Of course they do.” He arched his eyebrows, and she couldn’t help but smile back. She approached the window so she could stand next to him, her left arm touching his right. They looked out over the madness of water, and as sheets of rain began to pelt the windows, she wanted to hold his hand, to reach out and stroke the soft skin of his neck, but she did not. This was his place of work, his office, and she was only a visitor.
Aeneas mumbled something, and his mumble was echoed by D. J. Angela realized then that these two were more like a married couple than she and Aeneas were—they were the ones who spoke a secret language, who read each other’s minds.
Aeneas reached into one of the bulging pockets of his jacket and pulled out a Blow Pop. He offered it to her, and she shook her head. “One of our supporters works at this company,” he said as he unwrapped it. “Sends us a case of them before every trip. Lauren won’t touch them because she doesn’t believe they’re vegan.”
“Are they?”
“Of course.”
“Who’s Lauren?” Angela asked.
His eyes scanned the horizon, binoculars in one hand, Blow Pop stick in the other. She wasn’t sure whether he hadn’t heard her or whether he’d ignored her. For the first time it occurred to her that he now had the advantage that she’d so comfortably held on land. Now he was back in his element, and she was as lost on his turf as he’d been on hers.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Icebergs. It’s premature, probably, but I prefer that we see them before we hear them.” His eyes remained focused on the outside.
Angela felt hunger growing within her and asked, “Have you eaten already?”
“I don’t eat breakfast. But there’s food in the galley.” He glanced down at her, as if just remembering that she was new to the ship. “Want me to show you the way?”
“I can find it. Better that I get lost than we hit an iceberg.”
She slid open the door and exited the bridge, where a burst of cold air slapped her fully awake. She stood at the rail for a few moments, watching the waves, catching the eye of a wandering albatross gliding past. It had been years since she last made this passage, and seeing the albatross felt like greeting an old companion.
She climbed down the stairs, back into the ship. She could hear music playing in the cabins as she passed, young voices talking and laughing. It reminded her of a college dormitory, and she felt stuck on the outside looking in, as she always had back in school. Those awkward years were nothing she wanted to repeat, but the feelings were still so vivid, those situations in which she’d always existed on the periphery.
In junior high, she’d lost herself in books, in backyards climbing trees. Most afternoons she hiked through a small patch of woods near her house, surrounded by industrial parks and divided by railroad tracks. She was too stubborn to worry about the risks of a young girl alone in the trees. She was invisible there, watching the older kids smoking pot in a clearing, imaging herself climbing aboard the trains that passed. While other kids were memorizing their lines for Arsenic and Old Lace or tossing a basketball around a humid gymnasium, she was watching squirrels bark at one another and hide acorns under leaves, or sometimes just pretending to hide things, to throw the squirrels off. She had watched the birds, learned their names and voices: the cardinals calling to one another with their unmistakably sharp lyrics; the blue jays gathering on the tree limbs to harass a migratory Swainson’s hawk, nipping at its feet in flight. Now, looking back, it was clear that she’d been on a path to becoming a naturalist. Perhaps if she’d had a boyfriend in school, he may have distracted her from her journey. But she was too busy nursing chicks that had fallen from nests back to health.
She passed by the closed cabin doors and found her way to the galley, a cramped room with four tables of various makes and sizes, each half-occupied. She felt eyes upon her as she navigated between the tables to a stainless steel counter that held what looked like breakfast. A man stood behind it, preparing coffee. “Hello, Angela,” he said.
She recognized the face and smiled, wishing she could remember the name that went along with it.
“Garrett,” he reminded her. “The chef.”
“Yes, right.”
“We’ve got pumpkin scones, Tofurkey sausages, the usual fruits and cereals. There is always plenty of everything when we’re in the Drake Passage, so many of the crew forgetting to take their meclizine tablets.”
A tall blond woman brushed up against Angela and reached for an apple. Angela took a step back and offered her hand. “Pardon me. I’m Angela.”
“I know who you are,” the woman said, without looking up. She grabbed her scone and left. Angela turned to Garrett with a quizzical look.
“That’s Lauren,” he said. “Not exactly the warm and fuzzy type.”
“What does she do?”
“Keeps the ship fueled, running, on time. We’re off schedule, incidentally, which she’s none too happy about.”
“And I’m the reason why.”
“Please. We’ve never been on schedule. Not with Aeneas at the helm. Every day’s an adventure with our dear captain.”
Garrett guided Angela around the room, stopping at each table and offering up names, too many to memorize. She focused on three at a time, the friendliest faces so far: Maggie, Hedley, Ben. Maggie, young and fresh-faced, wore a wrinkled CDA t-shirt. Hedley looked his role as first engineer his long hair dirty and frayed as if from long hours in the engine room. Ben seemed to have more tattoos than skin to hold them; flames crawled up his neck and circled his ears.
Angela sat down next to Hedley with a scone and a mug of coffee, listening to the group banter over who clogged the toilet next to the meeting room, over why Maggie hadn’t been in her bunk earlier that morning. And then Angela’s mind returned to Lauren, to that stoic Roman face, devoid of emotional crevices and flaws, and she wondered how Lauren fit into the social structure of this mostly volunteer crew. Angela realized that this ship likely suffered from many of the same dynamics of her research base, and she wondered whether she’d simply traded a soap opera on land for one at sea.
“Is there a restroom on this level?” Angela asked.
“Down the hallway, on the left,” Maggie said.
Angela thanked her and stood. “I think those waves are taking their toll after all.”
“Or Garrett’s cooking,” Ben said.
They laughed, and Angela left, her breakfast uneaten. She didn’t feel seasick; she simply needed to get out of there. She walked to the end of the hall, down a flight a stairs and then another, until there was nowhere else to go. The hallway was uncarpeted and dimly lit. She saw a room marked Storage and entered. The room, piled high with boxes, was lit by a tiny porthole. She approached the window and felt at first as if she were looking into a washing machine, eye level with the white tips of waves, dousing the glass, leaving streaks behind only to be erased again by the next wave.
Alone at last, she leaned her head against the thick glass. This was not how she imagined her voyage would be. Eyes following her every move. Not knowing where to turn for a moment alone. She’d never considered that she was stepping not only into Aeneas’s life but into the lives of so many others—people who may not want her here, or at best, didn’t care. At Punta Verde, escape was always just a hill away. On a boat in the middle of the Drake Passage, she had no refuge.
She looked at her watch. Though she felt as if she’d been awake for days, it was still only mid-morning. She imagined her camp, a few hundred miles to the north. It was Tuesday, which meant Shelly would be checking on the chicks in Back Bay. Doug would most likely be assisting. Others would be scattered north and south of the research station. And Shelly would have been the first to have read the hastily scribbled note in the office:
Leave of absence. Left by boat. Please forgive me.
—Angela
Would Shelly have been surprised? Would they now be missing her, as much as she was missing them?
She heard a noise behind her. Heart jumping, she whirled around to see a large cardboard box fall from the top of its stack, revealing a man in a white t-shirt that read crew. Angela tried to step back and found herself pressed up against the porthole.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
He was soft-spoken and sounded harmless, but she noticed that he didn’t look quite like the other crew members. Maybe it was the absence of tattoos on his arms, or the fact that his hair was short and neatly trimmed, an almost white shade of blond. He was tall, though slumped shoulders belied his height. And he looked away as she stared at him.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” she said.
“Oh, no. I’m Ethan.”
“Angela.”
He locked on her eyes for a moment, then looked down.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s just that, well, I’m new here.”
“That’s refreshing. So am I.” She smiled, but she wasn’t sure he noticed; he didn’t hold her gaze for more than a couple of seconds.
“No. I’m really new.”
“I boarded last night,” she said. “I’ll bet you can’t beat that.”
He looked at her, surprised. “Last night?”
“Yes.”
A weight appeared to lift from his shoulders, and though he didn’t smile, she could see his chest moving again.
“I boarded in Puerto Madryn,” he said.
“Oh?”
“To be honest, I’m not supposed to be on board at all.”
“That makes two of us.”
“No, I mean”—he paused and leaned forward—“I’m a stowaway.”
Angela laughed and waited for him to join in, but he only looked at her. “You’re serious?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
“What about your uniform?”
He looked down at his crew t-shirt and laughed awkwardly. “This? I just needed a change of clothes. I found a whole box of these in here.”
Angela studied him, not sure how to respond. What she knew she should do was leave the room and report him to Aeneas—but she didn’t relish the idea of returning to a room full of strangers when she could stay down here with only one. And Ethan certainly didn’t look dangerous; she’d probably handled penguins that could put up a better fight than he could.
“Please—don’t tell anyone,” he continued, as if sensing her unease. “I don’t mean any harm. I was planning to get off the ship before it left, but the next thing I knew, it was pulling out of the harbor. I planned to turn myself in. I honestly did.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
“I was about to, but when I went up to the deck to find the captain, I saw him pointing a gun at this fishing boat. I figured it would be wise to lay low for a little while longer.”
Angela felt a pang of guilt, knowing what drove Aeneas to board that fishing boat: the pursuit of a penguin tag, the one now dangling around her neck. She had never paused to think about those fishermen. But now that she was here, having left her anger behind on the shores of Punta Verde, she realized that she was as complicit as Aeneas. A pirate by proxy. She told herself that the fishermen were okay, that the sunken ship was insured.
But now she faced Ethan, another victim, albeit indirect. “So why’d you come on board in the first place?” she asked.
“I’m looking for someone. My girlfriend, Annie Miller. Do you know her?”
Angela shook her head. “But I don’t know everyone yet. Are you sure she’s here?”
He nodded. “She invited me to come along, but I was—well, the timing wasn’t right. That is, until I came across this ship in Puerto Madryn. I thought I’d try to find her.”
“So why are you hiding?”
“I’m not hiding from her. I’m hiding from that crazy captain.”
Angela sighed. “That crazy captain is my boyfriend.” She watched his eyes expand.
“If I find Annie, she’ll vouch for me,” he said. “I’m just not sure how to do it without getting caught first.”
He had a sad look about him, the look of someone left behind or lost, a feeling Angela could identify with, now more than ever. It made her feel sympathetic toward him, even though she wasn’t sure what to do with him.
“Let me find her,” Angela said. “Stay here, okay?”
Ethan nodded. She could only imagine how Aeneas would react if he knew she were hiding a stowaway. But a part of her enjoyed having a secret of her own, knowing that there was one person on this boat more lost than she.
She went out to the side deck for some air. The sun was still hidden by clouds ahead, but the horizon was outlined in a brighter, almost silvery shade. The waves were high—sea spray moistened her face, and she had to grip the railing to stay upright. They had to be close to the Antarctic Convergence, she realized—where the oceans of the north met the Southern Ocean, warm waters colliding with icy cold, a wild roil that made her wonder what other conflicts awaited her. Again she felt a twinge of regret for having left, but perhaps it was inevitable, part of the natural cycle of her existence, that she would one day leave her penguins in the same fashion they have, for years, left her: an awkward, hurried dash into an unpredictable sea.