Page 64 of No One Aboard
Rylan crouched down on the cockpit bench and watched his father steer in silence. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been somewhere this quiet. Even diving underwater had a constant sound to it.
“When I learned how to sail, it wasn’t nearly this nice,” Francis said.
Rylan rubbed at his tendons and let his father talk.
“It was an all-boys trip across the Atlantic, meant to whip us into shape a bit. I got into some trouble when I was around your age, and my family pooled what little they had into straightening me out. My father was a proud man, even though he didn’t have a dime to back it up.
“So I worked like hell and learned to navigate and swab the deck. Felt like a sixteenth-century military draft. The food was awful, sawdust bread and dried beef. I got so seasick in the beginning, I could hardly get out of my bunk to stand watch with my team.”
Rylan waited patiently for the point. Something likebut I persevered and look at me now.Or maybeit’s a hard life at sea, so don’t think you’re the exception.Or eventhis is my roundabout explanation for where I’m taking you all.
Francis was fond of pounding life lessons into his stories.
“One night I belly-crawled out on deck to vomit my dinner over the side. We didn’t wear life jackets all the time, so I was just soaked and shivering, holding onto the lifeline with one hand and pushing my hair back with the other. I thought I was going to die I felt so sick. I was also a touch dramatic back then.” Francis smiled, and Rylan caught what he didn’t say.Dramatic like you.
“Anyway, when there was nothing left to hurl, I took in my surroundings. I’d been on the boat for days, but it was the first time I really looked at the water. And I saw it was glowing.”
Rylan stayed still and kept eye contact whenever Francis looked over.
Francis shook his head in wonder. “The white water that broke across the bow was glowing. Found out later it was bioluminescent phytoplankton, provoked by the moving boat. From then on I made a point to look around,reallytake it all in. I still remember all the shitty stuff from that trip if I think back on it, but what comes to mind when I recall where sailing started for me, where life started for me, I see the bioluminescence. I see porpoises swimming in a lightning storm. I see how high the ocean can raise a ship, and how deep she can drag it down. I see what she’s given me to make me into the man I am now.”
Francis went quiet for a moment in that way older people sometimes did, as if arrested by a thing that happened long ago. Rylan wished he could meet his father when he’d been seventeen, before he was rich or successful, when he’d only been a boy on a boat.
He wondered if they could have been friends.
Francis faced him. “Power and potential. That’s what I see when I look at the ocean, and it’s what I see when I look at you.”
Rylan met his father’s eyes, blue like a Perlemoen crab’s. Did he really see power or much of anything when he looked at Rylan? Rylan wanted it to be true, even if he felt like an impostor. He wanted to be what Francis imagined he was.
Francis waved a hand around in the air. “So look around, son. The sea isn’t the end of the world. It’s most of it.”
Out of habit, Rylan obeyed. He looked around.
Sails brimmed. A fine layer of crystalized salt had encrusted the railing like tiny stalagmites on the mouth of a cave. Rylan dragged a finger through the salt, leaving a trail on plain wood.
He peered down into the water and did a double take.
Francis chuckled behind him. “Go to the bow. Take a good, long look.”
Rylan laughed despite himself and rushed to the front of the boat, leaning as far out over the ocean as he dared.
Luminescent blue water pushed up against the bow. Rylan wondered for a moment if this is what the Blue Men of Minch actually looked like, if their lore about being fallen angels meant that they were actually toppled stars that had collected in the water to giveThe Old Eileena gleaming cloak.
Of course, that was ridiculous. Like Francis said, these were phytoplankton, dinoflagellates, if Rylan remembered correctly. They shone in response to movement in case a predator was attacking. The glow was a last-ditch effort to attract an even bigger predator to scare away the first.
Rylan tried to imagine how the boat looked from above, flying on a carpet of stars. He stayed there, grinning like an idiot at the glowing water, until his eyes stung and he returned to the cockpit.
He felt... relieved. For a precious moment, he wasn’t worrying about his father or his sister or the dead. He just thought about how nice it was that ocean water sometimes glowed.
“It’s something, huh?” Francis clapped his back.
“Yeah.” Rylan hesitated, feeling like he should say more but coming up empty. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Francis pulled him inward then, an ambush embrace. He mussed Rylan’s hair and patted his back in a masculine affirmation.
“My boy,” he murmured, and Rylan realized he didn’t know the last time he had hugged his father.
