Time & Tide - Original 抖阴社区 Version

Chapter Two: In Which Jessie Is Unwell

I stifled a laugh against the back of my good hand, because if he was the person the author of this surreal adventure was trying to throw in my path, they had seriously picked the wrong woman.

Alarmed by my laughter, Captain Goodenough bustled back into my line of vision briskly. I wondered who was steering the ship. Wasn't the Captain supposed to steer, or was that a Hollywood convention? I couldn't seem to make my eyes follow him.

"What year is it?" I croaked.

It was the first thing I had said outside of the cabin. He stopped, stared at the side of my head for a drawn out moment, the concern back. I did not look.

"'Tis the year 1805, hand to God," he said, gently, gravely. As if sensing how deliberately serious my inquiry was. "October twenty-first, if we're being particular about it."

I rubbed the side of my head with my good hand. The throbbing in my other hand and ribs had dulled to a low ache. I felt groggy, but didn't want to slip back into unconsciousness. To that floating blackness that was too much like being at the bottom of the ocean. Besides, what if I had a head injury? I was supposed to stay awake.

I flexed the fingers of my right hand – will I ever be able to type again? Hold a pen? Drive? – and the sting of it made me blink, sent adrenaline clear and sharp racing down my veins, and I woke up a bit.

I curled my fingers around the blanket, resisted the urge to pull it up to my chin, up over my mouth to hide the whimper, over my head and close my eyes and make the world just go away.

This had to be a joke. It had to. I shoved down the desperate urge to cry. There was enough salt water around me, in drooping mist in my hair, on the backs of my hands where the mobile fingers clutched the edge of the blanket.

I wasn't going to add to the world's supply.

I sat and stared until I could not stare any longer. My chin nodded and dropped to my chest, eyes slipping shut with cool relief, wetter in the corners than I would care to admit. I nodded where I sat, fingers going lax, ankles uncrossing heavily. An arm under my head, my cheek pillowed on the railing, bobbing, bobbing.

And never still.

* * *

In the morning, I woke to find myself back in the lumpy bunk. The little pool of darkness that had kept the real world at bay the night before had dissipated in the morning light filtered through the dirty glass of what proved to be the Captain's cabin. I was alone, still bundled in the old-fashioned clothes, and took the opportunity to figure out how deep this... this fantasy, this fiction went. Surely all the books on their shelves, the clothes in the cupboard, the maps, the ledger, something would betray that... but no, perusing the charts and books and logs just confirmed that it was late October 1805, and we were heading back to England at the tail end of a limping trail of the survivors of the Battle of Trafalgar. Or what would eventually come to be called the Battle of Trafalgar.

The sound of the doorknob turning sent me scrambling back for the bunk as fast as my bruised torso and broken fingers allowed. It opened on Captain Goodenough holding a wooden tray, with the kind of self-deprecating smile that made it clear that he knew that fetching breakfast was below his station. Wordlessly, I accepted a cup of tea still swirling with a generous daub of milk and a meager ration of a ship's biscuit with Captain Goodenough's apology. It was all the ship had. He promised me that they would stop in port soon and pick up some fresh vegetables and fruit, but I was actually happy for the ship's biscuit, and that it was so small. I hadn't eaten since the crappy in flight Salisbury steak. That had ended up on the deck of the HMS Lyre and sprinkled liberally throughout the Atlantic. I didn't really feel like putting anything else back into my stomach just yet. At least, nothing substantial. And I hated milky tea.