Excerpt: Travelers

Chapter One
[Base Plot Point]
The sun was just rising over the horizon, lighting the ocean with a thousand blinding sparkles tempered by pockets of shadows in the waves. Craig put his hand over mine on the rail of the dock, watching the bustling men and women finish the final preparations for debarkation.
“You don’t have to go, Hailey.” He said, for probably the thousandth time.
I swallowed the trigger-fast reaction to snap at him and smiled instead, looking up at my brother’s worried face, “I know, Craig. I’m not running away from anything, you know, I’m just ready for a change. It’s not like I’m not coming back, or something,” I reminded him.
“I know it’s just-just, you’ve been kind of weird since you found out about Mom. And you’re going so far, by yourself-I wish you’d let me come with you-”
“Right, I’m sure Marilee would be thrilled for her new husband to go off gallivanting with his little sister, leaving her at home, pregnant and pissy.” I interjected before he could finish the unconsciously condescending sentiment. He just wanted to protect me, but it was time for me to take a little ‘me’ time, and let everything else go, just for a while.
Craig smiled a bit wanly at this, “I suppose you’re right. She already thinks I’m choosing you over her by being here right now instead of going with her to that parenting class.”
I stood on tip-toe and kissed his cheek, he looked mildly uncomfortable but didn’t pull back, “you kind of are, Craig, but it’s only for today and then you can be all her’s again.” A shadow flahed in his eyes, it was one I saw often when we spoke of his wife.
“I love her,” he said softly, “I do, more than I’ve ever loved anyone besides you,but sometimes...it’s just hard.”
“I know,” I said, even though I didn’t, “love is hard, right?”
He nodded, dark eyes brooding, “it is. I love her so much, and I know she loves me, it’s just hard when I try to explain to her that I had you first and you’re still mine, you know? Even if you’re all of nineteen and grown-up,” he said, before I could interrupt, with a teasing smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Ah, I don’t know what I’m saying, just talking out my a-ear, I guess.”
My ruffled dignity softened at this habitual correction, “I swear more than you do, Craig, but it’s cute that you still do that.”
A woman bustled up, interupting whatever Craig had been about to say, “Ms. Hailey Rider?”
“That’s me,” I said with a polite smile, sudden butterflies in my stomach telling me that I was really leaving soon.
The woman nodded, flaxen hair poofed in what I secretly called a ‘square-head’ do, and an aloof gray pantsuit that belied lively blue eyes and a mouth that looked accustomed to smiling. “Ms. Rider, my name is Eloise Hunt. We’re about ready to board, I believe all of your baggage is stowed, correct?”
I nodded, mouth suddenly dry, “that’s right, I’m all set.”
“Perfect. If you just want to line up by the gangplank and have your ticket ready, we’ll get this show on the road.” Eloise Hunt beamed and hurried off to speak to another group of passengers.
Craig exhaled lustily, patting my hand. “Okay, better get going, kiddo. Call me, you know, whenever you feel like it.”
“I will,” I said and cleared my throat.
“Be careful, don’t drink the water,” He grinned, the shadow in his chocolate eyes again.
I rolled my eyes and threw my arms around his shoulders, standing on tip-toe to reach that part of his anatomy. “I’m going on a cruise with a reputable business, not on a tugboat to live in a hut in Brazil, I’m sure the water will be fine.”
“Well, just be careful, no gallivanting with strange young men, or-”
“I’ll be fine. Be good, and say goodbye to Marilee for me.”
“Yeah, I’ll just do that. I love you.”
A P.A. announcer was informing the waiting passengers that boarding would commence in the next few minutes and to, “please have tickets ready.”
I looked up at the speaker and tugged my ticket out of my fully-loaded purse, “I love you too.” He shocked me then by kissing my cheek, and all of a sudden I couldn’t speak and I couldn’t swallow. I swiped the tears away before they could fall and I lost all semblence of determination. “Okay,” I said, exhaling hard, “I’ll see you in three months. Bye, Craig, thanks for being here.”
He nodded and we exchanged a long look, the kind where two people who have been together forever can have a full on conversation with no words between them. I nodded and turned to the growing line of people. My heart jumped with excitement, so many people, all so different and going for different reasons, embarking on this adventure. I looked over my shoulder and shot a big cheesy grin at my brother and skipped to the end of the line. I could almost hear him muttering, “you’re going to break your ankle, kiddo.”
Crash
“Attention, attention please:while we’re passing through the storm, the water will be a bit choppy but please remain calm and keep your small children with you. We ask that you remain below deck at this time, please enjoy our below-decks’ amenities and have a good evening. Thank you.”
The ship creaked and I peered out my picturesque porthole window with some trepidation. My cabin was above water line, thank God, and the lights lining the side of the ship illuminated just enough of the roiling waves to confirm what my fluttering stomach had already told me. I clutched a pillow to my chest, shivering although the temperature of the cabin was nice and toasty. I had tried to call Craig but my phone, supposedly a satellite phone, wasn’t working. “Piece of shit,” I muttered, glaring at it with disillusionment. A knock came at my door, almost drowned out by a teeth-chattering explosion of thunder, followed by a blinding flash of lightning so close I thought I could almost smell the ozone. I threw my pillow back on the bed and checked my peephole. I pulled off the chain lock and opened the door, “Eloise!” I cried, relieved by the sight of this now-familiar face. Her usually rosy expression was dampened now by stress, and her eyes, a bright blue, were guarded.
“Hailey. Can I come in, please?” Her voice was soft and confidential, hoarse with some emotion I couldn’t decipher.
I nodded, puzzled, “of course, come on in.” I opened the day all the way and stepped back, allowing the little woman in. She was, maybe, five-foot two, a good four inches below my own five-six. Compact, she had the softness of age and the toughness of experience. She had rather adopted me over the last three weeks. She had taken her days off to correspond with our stops so we could go on land together, marveling together over the sights that were new to me and still enchanting for her. Now she looked tired and all of her sixty-four years and more.
“Are you alright, Eloise? You don’t look well...”
She smiled wanly, “oh, I’m just old right now.” Strange as that statement was, it was exactly right, it fit.
She sat on the bolted chair, one of three pieces of furniture, including the bed and a small night table with a chic lamp bolted to it. I sat on my bed, drawing my knees up Indian style and pulling the pillow back over my lap, a habit long practiced, because I wasn’t in possession of a movie-star flat stomach and felt overly self-conscious of that fact.
“Hailey Elizabeth Rider,” she said with slow deliberation, her enchanting blue eyes boring into me with an intensity that made my scalp prickle. It prickled all the more, for there was no way for her to know my middle name, unless she had looked at my passport somehow, or had looked up my ticket information and she wasn’t the sort to do that.
I waited, chewing the inside of my cheek uncertainly. “Yes?” I finally had to break the silence.
She closed her eyes and she looked so tired I could have cried for her. “I thought so. I hoped not but-well, I guess I knew and didn’t want to admit it.”
“Knew what?” I demanded, thoroughly confused and alarmed now.
“Fourteen years ago I met a woman,” she murmured, her voice papery and fragile.
“Fourteen y-? No.” I said, shaking my head, clutching my pillow, the prickle in my scalp sliding down my back and I knew what she was going to say.
“A woman with raven’s wing hair, going prematurely gray at the temples, with eyes the color of a shallow sea, and small crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes from, I think, smiling often in the sun.”
I shut my own eyes now, as if that could protect me from this onslaught of words.
“This woman was very special. I knew that the moment I saw her. Very special, and very troubled. Her name was-”
“Elizabeth Michelle Bannet Rider?” I whispered, shaking my head and knowing it was true.
“I knew you for her daughter when I saw you, as soon as I laid eyes on you. You look just like her, and very different as well.”
“Why are you telling me this, Eloise? My mother left me fourteen years ago, when I was five years old. I barely remember her.”
Eloise Hunt’s face was lined with strain, her eyes wide and unseeing, and when she spoke her voice was not her own, but a stranger’s, quiet but strong, full of the certainty of truth, a shiver rippled through me, cold in my stomach. “Hailey Elizabeth Rider, a child will ask for help and you must do it, though it costs you everything. An enemy will require your surrender and you must yield; an ally will require your blood and you must not give it. There will come a time when a choice must be made, you must remember, Hailey Elizabeth Rider, who you are, and, even more, who you will be. Be not enchanted by the silk tongue of a deceiver.” The woman before me shuddered and went limp. Instinctively I leapt to my feet and went to her, my sweaty hands fumbling for a pulse in her throat, my fingers felt hot enough to melt the cool, thin flesh, but I found a feathery pulse, steady and growing stronger beat by beat. I collapsed on the shining wood floor and tried to inhale a deep calming breath, realizing I hadn’t exhaled my last breath since she had begun speaking. The breath wouldn’t come and I fumbled for my purse, digging through the cluttered bag for my inhaler, and puffed twice. My airways relaxed and I drew in a slow, sweet breath and began to shake. I crawled back on my bed, hugging the pillow to myself, knees drawn to my chest, unable to tear my eyes away from the again-familiar face of my friend, Eloise Hunt. She hadn’t seemed unstable before, but perhaps I had simply missed it? Yes, perhaps she HAD seen my mother fourteen years ago, and I’d been told by the few relatives I still spoke to that I was her spitting image...but the rest? Eloise Hunt, grandmotherly figure, had not been the one making those strange pronouncements with the chilling fervor of truth spearing each word into my marrow. I shivered again as the words echoed in my mind. My shiver was echoed by a shiver in the ship as thunder rolled overhead, and a wave crashed into my porthole window, shaking the triple-paned glass in it’s frame. The ship made a little frog-leap that must have been huge if I felt it safe within my insulated cabin.
Eloise stirred and I pressed myself idiotically against the wall, like that extra inch would make or break me. “Eloise?” I asked, trying for ‘bold and confident’ and coming out with a whisper so faint it almost didn’t count.
She must have heard me though, for her eyes fluttered opened and focused on me. I recoiled slightly at those piercing blue eyes, though I could tell even from where I sat that it was only Eloise in there now. When she spoke, her voice was cracked with thirst and age and exhaustion, “come here, child, let me hold you. It’s alright.” Despite myself I ran forward and knelt before her, letting her soft warm hands stroke my hair, hold my shaking shoulders.
“I know, it’s frightening,” she whispered. “Life is so frightening and so many things within it go outside of what it should...would that I could have kept it from you, I promise you I would have...What did she say to you?”
I clutched her around the waist, feeling as I did when I was a child and had had a nightmare. I opened my mouth to tell her, but a quiet voice, still as light, silenced me, I just shook my head and quaked.
“Okay,” she murmured, stroking my head, “okay.”

“Why did you tell me about my mother?” I asked, sometime later, when the memory of the strange episode felt more distant and the effect of it had worn off somewhat.
Eloise shrugged her thin shoulders, “I just had to. I don’t know why.”
“Where...Where did you see her?” I really wasn’t sure I wanted to know but I had to ask.
“On a ship, like this one, though, of course, not as modern.”
“Oh...when did she leave?” I thought perhaps this was a form of masochism, maybe I DID need counseling...
“On a three-day-trip in the UK. I remember because we had become acquaintences and I had said I would meet her in Wales with the ship. She-well, the tour guide said she had just disappeared...”
“Disappeared!? Did the police look for her?” A hundred things flashed through my mind, kidnap, rape, murder.
“Of course, child. They thought she had run off with a professor she’d been seen with, because he was missing as well.”
“Oh.” I said, a bit dully. I couldn’t remember much of the time immediately after she left, but she and daddy hadn’t been getting on for a while. Craig said they had been talking divorce for a long time before she disappeared. Would she really have just left us for another man, abandoning her children? Well, yes, that had been the theory for a long time. It was suprisingly painful to have that theory quasi-confirmed.
“I’m sorry dear. I feel I’ve made a mistake-”
“No, no,” I asurred her, “it’s alright. I’m a big girl, it’s time I learned the truth, right?”
Eloise smiled sadly, “you’re still so young, be careful.” I saw a flash of that Other in her eyes and I nodded, slowly standing.
“It’s getting late, I think I’d like to hit the sack.”
“Okay...”
I opened the door for her, acutely aware of that Other presence hovering just below the surface, I wondered if Eloise could sense it as well. From her behavior, she didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. “Goodnight, Eloise.” I said softly.
“Goodnight, Hailey Elizabeth Bannet Rider,” the Other said softly, with a look in her intense eyes that was a tender sorrow, “I’m so sorry, dear one.”
She turned and walked away, leaving me gaping at her in my doorway, goosebumps rising on the exposed flesh of arms and shoulders, my tank top suddenly not enough protection against the temperature. I realized it had been steadily dropping and I shivered now from cold as well as creeps. All I wanted was to curl up under my blankets and wake up to the clear blue sky and an ordinary day, to forget about Eloise and her strange pronouncements. ‘What did she say?’ Eloise had asked, and now that I thought about it, it was freakier that she didn’t seem to recall what she had said...Late stage syphilis? A long-pending break caused by my resemblance to my mother? I hummed the Twilight Zone theme song and snuggled into my bed. Still, it was odd that she had known my mother,however briefly. Surprisingly, I fell asleep immediately.
shipwreck
I was very cold in my dream, cold and trapped, wrapped up tight in a cocoon of cold, gripping stuff, surrounded by the white noise of some giant monster. I flailed and woke myself up, finding myself still freezing and still wrapped tight, the air filled with the shrieking rage of a banshee woken from her hibernation.
I yanked my arm free of my bedclothes, hitting the button on the lamp. It turned on, flickered and went out with a little fizz and the smell of burning plastic. In the brief light I saw my porthole window was broken in a jagged pattern. The wind and thunder roared through the hole, and leaping waves and driving rain were soaking everything, myself included. Disoriented, I thrashed out of the wet sheets wrapped about me like a shroud and tumbled out of bed. My feet met with at least two inches of water, icy and altogether too wet. Wide awake but still confused, I hit my light switch, but that light wasn’t working either. I opened the door and, once in the hall, I could hear the P.A. announcer shouting into the mic over the scream of the storm, “Please, remain calm. All passengers and staff are to come to the Captain’s deck through the inner stairwell. Please, walk, do not run, do not push. Calmly make your way to the Captain’s deck through the inner stairwells. They are located-” But the whine of the storm drowned out the frazzled voice before I could be informed of where the inner stairwells were. The hall was packed with milling people, I realized now, and more were standing uncertainly in their doorways. Some clutched small children, others held their spouse’s hand, some were sobbing hysterically. The ship hiccupped and a woman came rocketing out of her room, flying into the opposite wall of the hall with a sickening thud. She fell and lay unmoving. No one moved for a minute and then a fair-haired man hurried over and crouched beside her, checking her pulse. I could have told him she was dead, no one’s head goes in that angle naturally. He shook his head and stood, looking stricken and not a little bit ill. I felt ill too, but detached. I realized, rather absently, that I couldn’t breathe. My eyes were clouding at the edges and I knew that meant I hadn’t breathed in quite a while. Like an automaton, I turned to go back to my room to get my purse. Before I could get in the door, a huge blast of water threw me off my feet. I was carried into a bulky man and we tumbled down to the end of the hall, the ship canting wildly on one end like a one-sided scale.

I came to amid frightened whispers, I didn’t dare open my eyes yet or try to sit, the throbbing pain in my head telling me I needed to take it slow. It was desperately cold. I was laid out on something hard and cold, I guessed it was a deck, though what deck, I couldn’t tell. The storm was loud in my ears, and now and then pinpricks of rain darted my face and arms. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I was almost positive that I was soaking wet, and possibly bleeding. Were we still moving? My head was spinning, but I didn’t know if the rest of me was moving too or if that was an illusion. Cautiously, I opened my eyes, finding it not much brighter with then open.
“She’s awake.” The voice nearest me said faintly, and I felt a cold hand press just under my chin, feeling my pulse. The cold hand moved up to my head, feeling it with gentle pressings, I squeaked inadvertently, and the voice laughed faintly. “Sorry.”
I risked lifting my head and, after a stab of pain and a wave of dizziness, I was okay sitting up. I looked around at the dark shapes around me, unable to make out more than the vaguest features. The ship was carried up on a high swell and we all instinctively braced ourselves, setting our hands to the nearest solid object, be it ship or person. Mine happened to be the man who had checked my pulse and I held on with an iron grip until the ship subsided into a lower swell. Lightning cracked and I almost saw the steam rise off the ocean, the lightning illuminated the faces of four other people around me and that we were in an alcove of the top deck. “What about the captain’s deck?” I asked, my voice a hoarse croak.
“It’s no use. Filled to burstin’ and the stairways too,” a woman answered, her words touched with a Cockney accent.
“Oh,” I said hollowly. “Is it just us out here?”
I could feel rather than see the uncomfortable shiftings and glances shared. “Well, no. Some are still-still down there,” meaning the cabins, I guessed, “and there are others holed up on the deck below us, a few more scattered around...I don’t know about the rest. The swells have-taken quite a few.” The speaker, a man whose face I couldn’t see, finished barely audible.
“So what do we do?” I asked, feeling very small and helpless. We all gazed out at the ocean, the waves a darker amorphous shadow against the clouded night sky, the inky blackness broken all too often by the crack and fizzle of lightning, followed by a bone-jarring rumble of thunder. What time was it? How long would this go on? The lightning struck the deck and I screamed, my hair, half-dried, rose around my head in a cloud of black.
“We’re going to die, oh my Lord.” The English woman whispered, fervent as a prayer.
“No, we’re not!” The man next to me snapped, but I could feel the terror rolling off of him as surely as it rolled off me and I didn’t believe him anymore than the English lady did. Craig was right, I should have stayed home.

“Oh my God, there’s a child out there!” Screamed a woman who’d been silent until this point. We all looked and in the next flash of lightning, I saw the little boy stumbling on the deck, his mouth open in terrified shrieks that we couldn’t hear over the shriek of the storm. He tottered and fell, very nearly going over the edge.
“Oh no, he’s going to fall!” The English woman cried, I could barely hear her over the rumble of thunder.
“Someone has to help him,” I shrieked back, my throat raw from wind and the constant spray of salt water.
The boy turned and saw us, waving his little arms in supplication. A child will ask for help, and you must give it.
The words were like a slap in the face, a sucker-punch to my gut. I looked at the shadowed faces of my companions, as we clutched each other for another huge swell. Good people, all of them, I was sure. Good and decent. And terrified. Just like me. Why did I have to go? I wasn’t a hero, I wasn’t brave, by any stretch of the imagination. The boy screamed and this time I heard him, “help me!”
I leapt to my feet, my heart and lungs locked up with terror. My life was going to end tonight, anyway, better go out swinging. I heard my companions screaming at me to sit down, to wait a minute, to think things through-I thought I heard one of them tell me to say the act of contrition, but maybe that was a subliminal thought, long buried. I dashed onto the open deck, and was immediately slammed by the wind. Away from our meager shelter, the wind was a battering ram, tearing at my hair and clothes and skin, stealing what little breath I had. Lightning struck and something cracked with a monstrous sound. I felt the ship quake anew and saw the silhouette of *something* topple and crash into the ocean, causing a wake the breadth of the ship to come crashing over the rails. The boy had seen me coming and was struggling to get to me. The ship canted and he slid back a few feet before clutching a forgotten coil of rope, attached to it’s dispenser. I whispered a prayer and ran down the incline, going into a baseball slide with the ease of long summers of practice, letting gravity take me to the boy. I caught myself with a wrenching jolt, my right arm felt nearly knocked out of the socket but I held tight, wrapping my left arm around the boy’s sleight body. He was maybe six years old, soaking wet with maybe brown or black hair. Lightning struck and he screamed and I realized so did I. A wave broke the rail, soaking us and doing it’s best to drag me and the boy into the ocean, sucking at my strength like a giant malevolent mosquito. The ship righted itself for a minute and I used that time to wrap the rope around the boy’s chest under his arms, tying him close to the anchored end of the rope. “I got you,” I whispered, fingers shaking and numb with cold. I saw the wave coming, the wake of another piece of the ship that had broken free. It was the largest thus far. I didn’t have time to get back the relative safety of our little shelter. I wrapped the rope frantically about myself, my shaking fingers fumbling with it, unable to loop it because it kept slipping through my fingers. “Heavenly Father, I ask that you forgive my sins and grant me mercy, please, oh please, take care of Craig,” I hiccupped the last word, throat choked with terror, “God, don’t let me die!” The wave hit me hard, throwing me back against the ship. My crudely wrapped anchor cinched tight around my torso, I thought I must surely be cut in half, and then relaxed. The next wave hit me before I had recovered and I scrabbled weakly for the rope, which had somehow become unwrapped and now hung loose. I glimpsed the boy once, safely tied to the deck, spluttering and coughing, but I thought, with ridiculous clarity, that he probably wouldn’t drown, before I was dragged off the deck by the punishing water.
I hit the water with a slap that knocked the wind from me. I fought wildly for the surface, dark water churning around me. A few precious bubbles escaped my mouth before I clamped it shut, eyes open as wide as I could but still blind. Was I blind? Oh God. I opened my mouth to scream and water rushed in. I was hit by something and sent spinning off in a different direction, at least, I thought it was a different direction. A swell rose under me and I popped, by some miracle, to the surface. Scrabbling desperately for something, for anything, my seeking hands found a chunk of *something wooden*. I breathed in as deep as I could, somehow mindful that I wished I had my inhaler. Was the sky darkening or was it my eyes? I couldn’t tell. Popping above the water once more, I saw the ship, limned by lightning against the sky, and then St. Elmo’s fire raced down onto the deck, the ethereal blue flame flickering with the coldness of a stove-top fire. The next wave pushed my head under the water and I saw no more, my arms clamped tight about my literal life-preserver.