Polaris Read online

  The moon was low and sunrise near as he and Aaron padded wordlessly across the gently rolling deck. Henry had no trouble keeping his balance in conditions like this now and had even adopted the same loose-hipped, rolling gait that served the others so well. The one thing he still could not do well was climb the rigging to work the sails. The reason for that had less to do with the sea than the sky, though. He had discovered, much to his embarrassment, that he was terrified of heights.

  He took up his position on the pump. “Ready?” he asked, grasping the handle.

  “No,” grumbled Aaron, following it with a big, openmouthed yawn.

  “Too bad,” said Henry. “I think this boat is near to sinking.” He raised up, preparing to push his side of the handle down.

  But Aaron didn’t lift his handle. Instead, he fixed his gaze on Henry, who peered back at him in the dim dawn light. “This old boat is near to sinking, and we need to get it off the waves,” he said, his sleepiness replaced with an icy seriousness. “One more storm’ll be the end of us.”

  Henry held his gaze. “We will get her off the waves soon enough. We can’t be too far from Florida now.”

  “There’s other land that’s closer,” said Aaron. “And it’s not just the waves. Every minute we’re on board with that thing is a minute too long. You said it yourself: These barriers”—he lifted his chin toward the boarded-up forward hatch—“cannot hold it back.”

  “But we haven’t heard from it in days,” Henry began, but he stopped there, unwilling to lie further to his only real friend on board. He had, after all, heard from the thing just hours before.

  “But every day we don’t hear from it, it grows stronger,” said Aaron. “You said that too.”

  Henry nodded. He had said that, but his thoughts on the matter had shifted dramatically of late—and not in ways he felt comfortable sharing. He searched his sleepy brain for something he could say. “We gave it a good scalding last time, though. It may fear us. Bugs are, after all, quite dumb.”

  Aaron snorted. “That thing’s no bug.”

  Henry remembered the look in the Obed Macy’s eyes when Owen first pointed the pistol. True again, he thought. All he could think to do now was change the subject. “Well,” he said, “if we don’t start pumping soon, we won’t have to worry about it.”

  Aaron smirked. “You’re such a schoolmarm sometimes,” he said, bending down to grasp the pump handle.

  “Ready?” said Henry.

  Aaron nodded, and the two got to work. They pumped steadily as the moon set, took a brief break to watch the sun rise, and then got back to it as the sky lightened above them. It would have been beautiful, if not for the rancid bilge water splashing at their feet.

  Henry’s top half was soaked with sweat and his bottom half wet with bilge by the time Thacher and Maria showed up to relieve them. Henry was desperate for a drink of water and watched their approach eagerly. They seemed to take forever to cross the deck. Maria was limping badly now, and Thacher was all too happy to slow his pace to match hers.

  “You should change that bandage again when you are done here,” Henry said as Maria hobbled her way to his side of the pump.

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure I want to see what is underneath,” she said.

  “What she needs is a doctor, not fresh rags,” said Thacher.

  Aaron and Maria nodded emphatically at that.

  “Perhaps you could talk some sense into our little dictator,” Thacher continued. “He seems to respect your opinion.” He thought about that and then clarified, “Not about sailing, of course, but about matters scientific.”

  Henry looked around. He was outnumbered, and it made him uncomfortable. “Perhaps,” he said lamely, and headed straight for the scuttlebutt to plug his lying mouth with a cup of cool water. Because he knew he would say nothing of the sort to Owen. He agreed with Owen. They did need to reach the United States. The creature they were carrying with them might be a horrible thing, but Henry realized something else now.

  It was also a truly amazing discovery.

  The others had felt despair when they failed to kill it. Henry had felt relief. The creature terrified him, but the thought of its destruction now scared him nearly as much.

  It was an entirely new form of life: a hybrid organism, a fungus capable of a metamorphosis far more intricate than any butterfly’s. It was the intersection of three different fields of biology. Who knew what scientific advances it might lead to? Henry’s mind raced at the possibilities.

  And Dr. Wetherby had discovered this terrible, marvelous thing. It was his last and greatest contribution to science. It was his legacy. Henry was confident that a properly trained customs official could be made to understand that. The U.S. government had, after all, provided some of the funds for this research expedition. The creature must not be burned as a monster, but rather studied as a marvel. Perhaps they would even name this new species after Wetherby. What a way to honor his memory. The cooling water spilled down his chin as his face bent into a crooked smile.

  He cast his eyes around the deck. Owen was talking quietly to Emma near the helm. They both had on their broad black hats to shield against the morning sun.

  Suddenly, Henry caught a quick movement out of the corner of his left eye and heard a soft rustling. He whipped his head around toward the heavy storm tarpaulin that had been stretched over the nearest grating. He was almost sure he’d seen a flicker of movement there. He stared at it as he wiped his hand across his mouth and chin.

  “What are you looking at?” said Aaron, lifting up the water cup for his turn.

  Henry flinched but managed to collect himself. “Nothing,” he said. “Thought I saw the cover move. The wind, most likely.”

  “Aye,” said Aaron. “Guess we’re all a little jumpy now.”

  “Guess so,” said Henry, but his words were punctuated by the soft rustle of the tarp.

  He turned once again, and this time he did see something. Daffodil was advancing slowly toward a coil of old rope that had been left on the far side of the grating cover. “Oh, it’s just Daffy,” Henry said to Aaron.

  Henry watched her move. She was crouched down low in front, with her head just over her paws. Her tail flicked silently back and forth. Is she hunting something?

  “Get that, will you?” said Aaron.

  “The cat?”

  “No, the rope. We need it to mend the rigging—and someone’ll trip over it if we leave it there, anyhow.”

  “Oh, right,” said Henry, hopping over the corner of the grating cover and eyeing the coil of rope. Someone could definitely turn an ankle if they stepped in the dark hollow at its center.

  He brushed past Daffy and bent down to give her a scratch behind the ears. She avoided him, bending around his hand and continuing to stalk slowly toward the coil.

  “Hunting rope, are you?” said Henry.

  He straightened up and continued on toward their mutual objective. Human legs being significantly longer, he got there first. He knelt down. The coil looked heavy, and he reminded himself of some advice Owen had given him: Lift with your legs, not with your back.

  He wedged his left hand under the outside of the coil and reached in toward the dark well at its center with his right.

  HISSSS!

  Daffy leapt across the deck and landed atop the coil, hissing madly.

  Henry was so surprised by the sudden assault that he fell backward, landing on the deck. He looked down and saw three thin red lines along the back of his right hand.

  “She scratched me!” he blurted, and as he looked up, he saw that Daffy wasn’t done scratching yet. She was perched on the top of the coil, batting down into the circular hollow at its center with both front paws, like a tiny, clawed boxer.

  “Must be a rat in there,” said Aaron, looming over Henry and reaching down to help him to his feet. “You’re lucky you didn’t stick your hand inside.”

  Henry nodded, imagining how much worse his wound would have been if it had co
me from a rat’s teeth. But as he rose back to his feet and peered inside the coil, he got a glimpse of the horrible truth.

  He gasped and took a quick step back. “That’s no rat,” he breathed. “Not anymore.”

  “Oh, dear Lord,” said Aaron, seeing it now too.

  Poking out of the coiled rope was the face of a rat, slick with clear slime and baring two long blackened teeth at the cat just above it. But the head around its face was covered in dark red armor and topped with two bobbing antennas. Daffy tagged one of them with her paw, sending it waving wildly back and forth. The rat creature hissed loudly and rose to its full height. Its two front legs appeared in the sunlight, and then two middle legs. Each of them ended not in claws but in barbs.

  Emma appeared at a run, her sister’s spear gripped tightly in her right hand. “Daffy, get out of there!” she shouted. The ship’s cat paid her no mind, bunching up her hind legs and preparing to pounce down on the thing in the rope.

  “Ay, Dios mío,” Henry heard her breathe, and then a moment before the cat leapt, Emma did.

  She landed on the opposite side of the coil from Daffy, and as she did, she drove the spear down hard.

  The iron spike found a home in the rat-creature’s back. Henry heard a thick crunch as it penetrated the hard exoskeleton.

  Daffy made a mer! sound and leapt in the other direction, away from the sudden impact.

  Emma twisted the iron point in deeper, pinning the thing to the wood of the deck.

  Henry took a few steps forward and peered down inside the coil. He watched the bizarre creature squirm and twitch and then, a few moments later, fall still. He stared down at its body, more insect than rat now and covered with the same slime they’d seen before.

  “Where did it come from?” said Aaron.

  Henry remembered the rustling tarp, just minutes earlier. “From below,” he said.

  Suddenly, he saw movement within the coil. A little puff of white dust floated free of the creature’s mouth, and then another. More white powder drifted upward from the hole in its back. Henry’s eyes grew wide with both recognition and fear.

  “Get back!” he said, and when Aaron and Emma continued to stare down at the little carcass, he yelled it. “GET BACK!”

  He turned and all but wrestled them the first few steps, until they turned and began moving on their own. Finally, when they were a good ten feet away, he released them and turned to see which way the wind was blowing.

  He saw the spear sticking straight up out of the center of the coil and a small white cloud rising from inside. But as soon as the tiny particles cleared the top of the rope, the stiff sea breeze carried them through the rope railing and out to sea.

  Henry released the breath he’d been holding.

  “What was that cloud?” said Emma.

  “Those were spores,” he said. “Fungal spores.”

  “And, uh, what are those?” asked Aaron.

  “It’s how they reproduce,” he said.

  “Oh!” said Emma. “You mean …”

  Henry nodded. “It’s what that rat must have breathed in, and Obed before it.”

  “And Wrickitts before them both,” said Owen from just behind them.

  The others had left their tasks now and headed over to see what the commotion was about. Thacher moved around the little group, angling for a better look.

  “Don’t go near it,” said Henry. “Not just yet.”

  “Are you going to tell us what happened, at least?” said Thacher.

  “Henry was saved by a girl,” said Aaron.

  Henry just nodded. He didn’t find that embarrassing in the least.

  “And a cat,” he added.

  Henry gazed at the rat-creature’s remains through the walls of a clear glass jar. Checking once again to make sure that the lid was secured tightly, he carefully turned the jar around in his hands. He felt the weight of the little monster within shift and tumble. The inside of the glass was lightly frosted with fine white spores. He gazed through them into the creature’s open mouth. He saw the small tongue inside, a tiny slip of fuzzy whiteness. He noted a few more details: the blackened teeth, the exoskeleton …

  There was no doubt it had been transformed by the same fungus. Remarkable, he thought. It infected an entirely different species …

  He was alone in the cabin now, alone with his thoughts.

  The species was more adaptable—and more contagious—than he had feared.

  His master’s legacy was a voracious and opportunistic predator.

  These troubling thoughts were cut short by an excited cry from out on deck. Did I hear that right? he wondered. But the same call came again. He carefully wrapped the jar in a scrap of blanket and stowed it in his trunk. He locked it tight and then rushed out on deck.

  As soon as he emerged from the door, the call came a third time. It was Emma’s voice, carrying down from high up in the rigging. “Land ho!” she called, and then, pausing just long enough to gather more breath, she called again. “Land ho!”

  “Are you certain?” Aaron called up from his place at the helm.

  Emma leaned out from the foremast crosstrees. Her weight far forward, it was only her extraordinary balance that kept her from toppling out of her perch and splattering onto the deck below. She squinted into the distance, and there it was.

  It wasn’t much more than a fuzzy line rising along the center of the horizon now, but she was sure. She had seen that fuzzy line before—or fuzzy lines like it, anyway. The color was darker than the water below it, a green-black rising from a world of blue. It was land, all right, and a lot of it.

  She leaned back slightly and called down once more: “Yes, it’s land!”

  “I’ll get the spyglass!” called Owen, who now carried a compass in his vest pocket instead.

  Emma swung down from the crow’s nest and began descending the rigging. She had been placed up there as a lookout, and she had done her job. They’d known from the charts that they were approaching Cuba. They’d even spotted a few more sails off in the distance, as they approached the busy island. They’d been going too slowly to overtake any of those ships, and instead they’d kept their eyes out for the western edge of Cuba.

  As Emma neared the deck, she knew there was a problem. And as Owen returned from the cabin, already extending the spyglass, she knew what he’d see. Cuba was dead ahead.

  They’d found it—but they’d found too much of it. She hadn’t spotted the western edge of the island off to starboard. She’d spotted the whole darn thing looming up in front of them. And she knew what that meant.

  She watched Owen closely as she dropped lightly down to the deck and took up her usual post beside her sister. He peered through the glass, first straight ahead and then, very slowly, from side to side. He repeated the motions exactly and then deflated utterly. His shoulders slumped, and his chin dropped as he lowered the glass from his eye.

  Thacher snatched it away, and Owen let him.

  “Something went wrong,” he said, his voice soft and distant. He looked up and met Emma’s eyes. She saw his confusion, saw him redoing some calculation or other in his head.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said, and she truly meant it. Anything could have gone wrong. The calculations could have been a little off, or the currents. The steering could have drifted a few extra points since they took their last bearings. Everyone was tired and scared. And then, of course, there was the matter of Thacher ransacking the maps. That Owen, a novice navigator, had managed to guide them all this way and get them so close seemed a marvel to her. The others seemed to agree.

  “There it is!” hollered Thacher.

  “Where? Where? Let me see!” pleaded Aaron.

  “Hand it over, boys, I’ll have a look,” said Maria.

  But Emma knew Owen was in no mood to celebrate a near miss. The plan had been to skirt past the edge of the island and then continue the short distance to the Florida territory. But they had missed and were heading directly toward the
middle of Cuba, which Spain ruled with an iron hand.

  She wondered what he would do next. It was no idle question. In many ways, their entire future—if they were to have one—depended on it. You can’t sail through an island, she knew, only to it or around it.

  Suddenly, the spyglass was thrust into her hands. Everyone else had had a turn, and now it was hers.

  The view through the glass was much the same as the one she’d had aloft. The fuzzy line became a fuzzy lump. And as the ship lumbered on, the line grew, not just taller but also wider.

  “We are striking it amidships!” crowed Thacher. “We could hardly miss it now.”

  Owen roughly snatched the glass back from Emma’s hands and slapped it closed. “But miss it we will,” he said loudly.

  She turned to look at him. She understood this for what it was: not rudeness but a show of force, a demonstration of will.

  “What do you mean?” said Thacher. “You can’t possibly be saying …” Still staring incredulously at Owen, he pointed straight ahead. “It is right there. Right. There.”

  “But that is not where we are going,” Owen growled back. He stared back at Thacher for a few long seconds. Then he looked around at the whole group, save for Aaron, who had retreated back to the wheel.

  “We will sail around the island and continue to Florida as planned,” he said.

  Eyes gazed back at him in disbelief. Mouths dropped open in astonishment. They had all seen enough maps to know that Cuba was a huge island. Sailing around it would add days to their journey. Her thoughts swirled. They’d had a plan, and she’d agreed with it. But now? The plan had failed, but in its failure it had delivered them to the very edge of land …

  And was it a coincidence or divine providence that it had happened on the same day that a new sort of monster had been discovered? And it was a new threat that could prove even worse than the boy-faced horror below. Because sailing ships, as she knew from bitter experience, were full of rats. She remembered the worst nights, when she’d been forced to go to sleep with her boots on to keep the rats from gnawing at her feet.

  Owen turned on his heel and barked an order to the wheel. “Hard to port, Aaron!”