At night, the boy and the girl lie curled around each other in the belly of the ship. He holds her tight when she wakes from another nightmare, her teeth chattering, her ears ringing with the terrified screams of the men and women she left behind on the broken skiff, her limbs trembling with remembered power.
“It’s all right,” he whispers in the darkness. “It’s all right.”
She wants to believe him, but she’s afraid to close her eyes.
The wind creaks in the sails. The ship sighs around them. They are alone again, as they were when they were young, hiding from the older children, from Ana Kuya’s temper, from the things that seemed to move and slither in the dark.
They are orphans again, with no true home but each other and whatever life they can make together on the other side of the sea.
