My Diary from the Edge of the World (31 page)

There was one more thing, another surprise waiting for us right there at the edge of the frozen sea. Something stuck out of the ice in front of us that didn't belong to the natural shapes around us. Dad noticed it first, walked over to it, and squatted down beside it. We all followed. It was an ice pick, dug into the ice and holding a colorful piece of cloth in place—archaic looking, like an antique, but perfectly preserved. The colors were red and green, and Dad ran a hand along it carefully before saying, “It's a very old Portuguese flag.” He looked up at all of us. “The kind of flag Ferdinand Magellan would have flown.”

*  *  *

Does the flag prove that hundreds of years ago, Ferdinand Magellan was here? Did he hike off the edge of the earth? Did he find a way to journey across the galaxy to the place he'd come to find?

All I know is that the most eye opening, amazing thing that has ever happened to the Lockwood family is right here in front of us. And it's wonderful. And I'm so glad I saw it. And it can't save my brother.

I woke this morning with
a feeling of such heaviness, as if the black holes in outer space had crawled into my chest, making me empty inside. Before I'd even remembered where I was, or the reason for the way I felt, the feeling was there.

We've crossed back through the mountains and are resting before we make the long, rolling hike back toward the sea. With no ship to get back to, and nothing really to look forward to, we're taking our time. We're making our way back to where we left the
Alexa
, for no reason any of us can really say. What else can we do but go back to where we started from? Where else do we have to go?

*  *  *

Millie was sitting on her pack, looking up at the clouds when I climbed out of the tent early this morning. (Our Cloud is still strangely absent, and I wonder where it's gone and what it means.) I shivered into my boots and walked over and sat down beside her. Mom was stirring breakfast over a pot, hiding her face in her hood. I knew she couldn't have slept.

Millie, too, looked exhausted. She was dry-eyed and pale. I sat down right next to her and she linked her arm through mine, and we stared at the fire for a while.

I was trying to get the courage to ask something, but I didn't know if I could say it, because saying it made it real, like I'd given up. And I didn't want to give up. But I was thinking that, deep down, we all knew the truth—that at last, we had run out of places to run.

Finally, I turned to look at her. “Millie, what do you think it will be like? When the Cloud takes Mouse?”

She turned to me with a look that reminded me of something, but it's hard to describe. She looked the way I feel whenever I try to explain to Mouse about the day he was born—the bigness and fullness and worry all at once.

She opened her mouth, closed it again. And then she picked at a spot on her boots, looked at me, rubbed her lips, and said, “It's not Mouse that the Cloud came for.”

And I don't think I can write any more today.

Captain's log, March 5th

Today at approximately fifteen hundred hours, five people were found drifting in a small vessel just northeast of Cape Horn, two adults and three minors. All were brought aboard safely and in good health. They will disembark in New York when we make port in May.

When I was little, and
something made me sad, my family could always fix it. Mom would come in and make a funny face or tell me she was going to take me to the hospital. “You need your feelings amputated!” she'd yell with pretend urgency. Or my dad would rub my face with his whiskers until I'd squirm and laugh. Or Millie would annoy me into forgetting what I was sad about.

I never knew what it was like to feel something unfixable, or to have something hurt that will never stop hurting. It feels like entering a different world. It's not that it's not a happy world, or just as beautiful of a world as the one it was before. But there's a piece of me now that feels like it's chipped off and floating around
somewhere else, and I don't think I'll ever be able to reattach it. The good thing is that it hasn't disappeared. I know that floating piece is out there somewhere, even if I don't get to keep it.

It's been over a month since we left the Southern Edge, and I've finally decided I'm willing to write again, just for a little bit.

*  *  *

The SS
Labrador
picked us up off the eastern coast of the Crozet Islands after we'd spent almost eight days sailing our way north. (I'll get to
how
we were sailing in a moment.) The
Labrador
was such a shocking sight, it nearly blew us over, and even as we were being hauled aboard, it was hard to believe it was actually happening. (I suppose we only made it as far as we did without being bothered by sea monsters because our boat was so small and flimsy we just weren't noticed.)

They've treated us like royalty ever since. The ship is by far the most luxurious thing we've experienced since leaving home. It's taken weeks to feel comfortable sitting at the fancy captain's table and dining off his fine china. But try as they might to get us to talk, to tell them about what's happened to us, we've been a limp, lost crew.

*  *  *

I think now that some time has passed I can write a little bit about Millie. I'll try at least, and see where I end up, even if it's just not being able to write anything much at all.

I think I'd suspected longer than I'd admitted to myself what Millie's middle of the night talks with the Cloud had meant. I even imagine I knew why, that night, she kissed Virgil up in the topmast, and why she'd started changing toward all of us. That morning, after I last wrote, she told the others. Mom kept insisting that
nothing
was going to happen to
anyone
. The boys walked off together and huddled a ways away in the snow, their heads down. Dad had taken off his glasses and was staring out at the ocean.

A few days later, arriving at the shore where we'd originally disembarked, I don't think any of us were surprised to see that there was nothing but empty horizon where the
Alexa
had once been.

What did surprise us was that when we got right up close to the water, we discovered something we hadn't seen from farther back. Butting up against the land's edge, anchored by a metal hook in the ice, was the skiff—the small boat that had always been attached to the
Alexa
's side—filled with provisions, and a note nailed to the bow.

I apologize for my dramatic exit, and for behaving in a way so unfit for a ship's captain. I believe that maybe I thought life owed me something for what I'd lost. I've come back to my senses, and remembered things don't work that way. I'm sorry it didn't happen sooner.

We returned the day after we left you, and waited here for the agreed upon amount of time. But you haven't come back, and I can only assume this means you've made it to the other side. For that, I'm so thankful.

In case you haven't, I'm leaving this skiff here for you. She's not fancy or big, but she's all I have, and better than nothing.

I hope you won't need her. You all deserve for your dreams to come true. You are a beautiful family, and I wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Captain Bill MacDonald

I think we all felt a momentary surge of hope. But it didn't last for very long. Because along with the boat, there was also the Cloud, hovering low about a hundred feet away.

It was just starting to snow—not driving, windy,
sideways snow, but gentle, with drifty big flakes. Everyone had gone silent, but finally Mom spoke. “We'll keep going,” she said. “We'll get on this boat and sail northeast and see where we end up. Surely we can get somewhere worth getting to.”

Everyone turned to look at Millie, who was shaking her head softly. “No,” she said. “No, Mom, it's time. I'm sorry, but I don't want to run anymore.” She had her determined face on, the one no one can ever talk her out of.

I was standing closest to her, and I slipped my hand into hers. I thought she might push it away, but she held it tight and smiled at me gratefully.

“I can't let you go,” I said.

She smiled at me sadly. “You have to, Gracie.”

I felt my face fill up with pulsing blood. The feelings inside me were too big and wanted to burst out, needed to explode. “Then I'll go with you,” I said, my voice cracking. But she shook her head again.

“No.” She squeezed my hand tight. She stared up at the Cloud. “I
am
scared though, Gracie,” she said. The Cloud was moving now, drifting lower toward us, so that it was now at our height and about fifteen feet behind Millie. I stared into the black hole in the center of it that Millie and Sam said was a mouth, and shook my head.

“We let you down,” I whispered.

“Gracie,” she put her hands on both my shoulders, “remember what I said, when we were looking down at the mermaid city. I'm so glad we came. Remember that.”

She pulled away, and then hugged each one of us. My mom held on tightest and longest, unwilling to let go, and finally Millie had to unpry her arms and kissed her cheek. Dad stood beside them looking like he might disintegrate. Millie gazed at him and said, like she was reading his mind, “You've never failed me, Dad. Never. Don't ever think you did.”

She hugged me last.

“There are endless possibilities,” she said. “That makes me hopeful. It really does.”

*  *  *

Ever since it had first shown up on our horizon, I'd always thought the Cloud was cruel: something that wanted to hurt us, waiting for the time to be right to break us apart. But that's not what it looked like when the Cloud took Millie away.

Once she'd said her good-byes, it beckoned for her to come closer with a little tendril of white vapor, gently, like a friend. It reached toward her, and she reached back—her hand disappearing into the mist.

“You know,” she said, looking back at us, “Sam is right. It doesn't look much like a clown. It looks like someone smiling at me.”

Tentatively she stepped farther into the Cloud, and it wrapped itself gently and softly around her shoulders. It looked like it was giving her a hug.

She turned to wave at us as the mist spread around her. She didn't look scared anymore, but curious, like she was thinking about what came next. Her waving hand was the last thing to disappear into the white puff of air, and then the Cloud began to rise.

As it did, for some reason I can't explain (except that I couldn't make myself watch Millie float away), I reached a hand out to catch the falling snow. I kept looking at the snowflakes, trying to see each one individually, tiny one by tiny one. You can't tell each snowflake is different just by looking—they all appear the same to the naked eye. But science tells us they are, and we can
imagine
how different they must be. We can't see it, but we know it.

I don't think I'll write in here again. In fact, I'm probably giving up my writing career forever—it doesn't seem very interesting now. So these will probably be the last words you read from me. The thing is, my hand feels too heavy, and nothing feels magic anymore.

It's October in Cliffden—Halloween
, in fact. The leaves are falling like they do every year. From my window I can see the trick-or-treaters getting an early start—it's not dusk yet, but already I can see a gaggle that includes a witch, a pumpkin, and a rock star running up our neighbor's steep driveway as if their lives depended on it. I don't even feel tempted to dress up this year. I think I've outgrown it for good.

Mom is making apple crisp downstairs. Mouse is out jogging. Yes, jogging. It's his new thing. He says he's training for the Olympics. Dad keeps telling him he's too miniature-size for the Olympics, but Mouse doesn't seem deterred. He's grown two inches in the last two months. His doctor says that his medication has been effective, and
that in another few months he might even be able to come off it. All signs point to Sam having a healthy life. He doesn't even hide under furniture anymore.

I always wonder, before I think things through, what's Millie doing. I forget sometimes that she isn't here. One minute I'll be missing her so terribly, and the next minute I'll say to myself, “I wonder if Millie will let me borrow her mirror.” And then I realize my mistake and miss her worse. Having a sister is a hard habit to shake yourself out of.

Tonight, a few minutes ago, I sat down on my bed in my room and looked around. And I decided it was time to dig this diary out of the closet, where I threw it as we were unpacking the day we arrived home. I want to see if my hand isn't so heavy anymore.

So here it goes.

I'll tell you about the last few days of the voyage home. They were uneventful, so don't get your hopes up.

It's easy to feel, the longer you're at sea and the waves rock you and the quiet stretches on, that the world is a beautiful place, and an endless one, and that you're a small speck on the planet, and not as big as you used to think.

I've never felt so small as I did on the trip home, but
it didn't bother me anymore like it used to. It actually made me feel a little better. For the first time I think I began to understand what Oliver said that night at Grandma's, about how he likes being small.

We sailed for weeks before the weather started getting warm. One day it was finally so nice out that the captain had the dining table carried onto the deck so we could eat “alfresco.” The clouds were threatening rain, but the captain was determined, and the fine linen tablecloth, and the cutlery, the shiny china plates were all laid out.