Page 32 of The Girl Out of Time
“Nothing. You’re wounded. Lie back down and—”
“Let me help!” If the ship was flooding, he wasn’t going to stand by and watch.
Jean-Baptiste shook his head in surrender. “Fine. Come on deck. The boys need help with the rigging. But promise you won’t get seasick!”
Theo nodded and followed his cousin, flinching as his shoulder stung when he climbed the ladder. A quick glance at it revealed a bandage, soaked with dried-up blood. Had he been stabbed? Shot?
The gale was almost unbearable on deck. Massive waves tossed the ship left and right, as if it were but a leaf, helplessly fallen off a tree. The men ran from the stern to the bow and back again, and Theo and Jean-Baptiste were quickly roped into helping furl a sail.
“We’ll have something to tell Father, huh?” Jean-Baptiste yelled over the wind, even though they were shoulder by shoulder.
“You know he’s never letting us leave after this,” Theo responded in the same volume.
“Eh … I’ll take a year or two at the farm.”
A man shouted at them. Jean-Baptiste turned to him. “What?”
The man shouted again and waved to a point behind their backs.
A bang followed a loud whizzing sound, and the entire ship shook as pieces of broken wood sprayed outwards from the hull.
That’s not the storm.
Theo turned around, shielding his eyes from the pouring rain. The shape of a giant, three-masted frigate loomed in the dark, swaying on the rattled ocean.
Coming straight for them.
Theo came to with another gasp, surprised that water didn’t flood his lungs. He was surrounded by pure whiteness. Was this death? The afterlife?
He blinked, and small details began to emerge. A corner of a wall. A dot on the ceiling. A small, bare room with whitewashed walls. Not the ship, but not home, either.
Where on Earth was he?
Voices drifted in from behind the closed door. He frowned, trying to make sense of the gibberish, until he realized it wasn’t nonsense. They were speaking English.
Did he get captured?
That jolted him up into a sitting position. A pitcher of water and a bottle of dark liquid stood on a bedside table next to him. His coat was gone, and he wore a simple but clean shirt. His shoulder stung, but it was a different, easier sort of pain—the kind a healing, not infected, wound emitted. The new bandage was pristine, and as he gingerly rolled his shoulder, the pain didn’t worsen.
The door opened, and a young woman ran in. “You’re awake!” She stopped at the foot of the bed, clenching the frame as if only that was preventing her from jumping straight onto him.
Theo blinked. The voice—he knew it. Light, melodic. The angel. She looked like one, too. A smiling face with full, pink lips, a button nose, and freckles spread across the cheeks; crystal-clear blue eyes in a slight almond shape, and thick black hair, bound up, but with a few curls framing her face.
Very well—she looked nothing like the angels, not in Caravaggio’s, or Botticelli’s, or Titian’s paintings—but she still was one to him, and her voice echoed in his memory.Everything is going to be all right.
But it explained nothing.
“Who are you?” he asked, automatically switching to English.
Her eyes widened.
“Poor boy must still be confused.” Another woman stood in the doorway—older, and dressed in simpler gray clothes, hair covered with a frilled white cap. “Don’t worry, my lady, he’ll get his bearings,” she said to the younger woman.
“Mrs. Atkins, would you mind giving us a few minutes? I’m sure he doesn’t want to be overwhelmed.” The younger woman’s eyes flashed from Mrs. Atkins to Theo, slightly panicked.
“Certainly, mylady.” Mrs. Atkins nodded and closed the door behind her.
The woman sat down on the edge of the bed. “What do you remember?”
