Velum

Liss had not been assigned to a watch shift since the new captain had taken charge. When she used to take her turn, she always asked for the window that stretched from twilight through dawn. She would begin the shift with her belly stretched across the bow, head over the side, watching for haloes of bioluminescence to indicate the wildlife below. In addition to the size of the cloud of light, the changes in shape could show her the difference between the jerky forward pulse of a nocturnal squid and the glide of a sleek whale. At times, it was almost as if a spiral staircase descended into the depths. Nobody else could ever see it, though. At that time of night, there weren’t very many people around to try.

The sunlight rising from behind the watery horizon radiated from below at dawn. She could see it in the water long before anyone else. As an eleven-year-old kid living on a research boat, there weren’t a lot of opportunities to feel special. Her insight into the things hidden in the early morning made her feel extraordinary.

This trip was different in a lot of ways. The old captain had been kind. He would give her old paper charts that she would fold into funny hats, purposely choosing the location of Australia or the islands inside Vancouver Island as a decorative accent. The new captain would stare at her in a way that made her uncomfortable. He would then ask someone to get her out of his sight. More than that, this was the first trip she remembered taking without her dad. He was only supposed to be gone for this two-week passage, but she already missed him terribly.

The Apocryphal was the only home Liss remembered. The wooden tall ship looked ancient and stately. It also looked harmless. But the shipwrights who built her had been expert puzzle makers and the vessel was built with a seemingly endless cache of secret passageways, storage compartments and rooms. Like stage magicians, they had used mirrors and props to expand the perception of the size of empty rooms while hiding other locations in plain sight. The seahorse-prowed ship had been legendary among smugglers and pirates during colonial times. When The Company bought it, they converted the cargo rooms to labs. When necessary, they pulled the magic curtains so that they could safely pass customs inspections in foreign ports.

---

According to the science lessons from her dad, the reason for their mission began with the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. Back then, the planet was not only filled with massive animals, it also grew a plant that secreted ichor, the substance responsible for creating magical and godlike creatures. The immortal and long-lived creatures who survived found that without ichor, they could no longer make more deities or mythical creatures. The best they could do was reproduce with humans, preserving a watered-down version of their powers.

In much of the world, the powers had been diluted beyond use. Remote island populations, however, seemed to have more concentrated amounts of divine DNA. This was even truer in places that had once served as ports for pirates, profiteers and sea merchants. The theory behind this was that these travelers were most likely to interact with sea gods and sirens and bless them with new life. The children may have grown up on board, like Liss, or they may have been dropped at one of the pirate ports and raised in the island communities.

The modern world rediscovered the mystical DNA in people, her father said, when they realized that certain people, like business leaders, politicians and televangelists could draw crowds of admirers when saying terrible, confusing things. It wasn’t the content of the words, either. If someone else tried to piggyback off the message, it was never as successful. A corporate DNA company had realized that all of these people had a certain genetic sequence that they dubbed “siren blood.” A global business of finding other extraordinary DNA sequences was born.

Now, the Apocryphal traveled from village to village, trading food, cash or other goods for DNA swabs. Liss would follow her dad through each town, hand in hand, looking for people to ask. There was a glimmer of light in the people he spoke to, like the swirl of plankton-illuminated bait fish. Sometimes, though, they were so radiant that she had to hide her eyes. If she brushed against them, even by accident, she could feel the power of frost or plant growth or lighting travel through her for a few moments. Just as she did when moving from a dark hallway to a sunny outdoor day, she would sneeze in the presence of these people. She never got to see them take samples. By the time the rest of the lab crew walked down the gangplank, she would be in her stateroom below deck, doing her homework and staying out of the way.

---

Without her dad, Liss spent more time in the galley, helping the chief steward, Annie. The redheaded, tattooed woman always had a plate of food and a story for her. But Annie’s favorite stories were typically gossip about people that Liss barely knew. After a week, she was much happier exploring the boat alone and trying to find new secrets.

Three floors down, near the stern, there was a smooth, paneled wooden corridor with inlays of birds, fruit and branches. As far as she knew, the narrow hallway had not given up any secrets to any member of the crew. She began spending the pre-dawn hours with a flashlight clipped to her hip, palpating the walls, sliding magnets near board edges and gently tapping to find hollows. On the third day of exploring, she heard the voice.

“Howcome they haven’t locked you up yet?”

The voice was high, soft and childlike with a Caribbean lilt. Liss let out a soft gasp. The voice spoke again.

“You’ve gotta be what, ten or eleven now?”

“Eleven.” Liss spoke out of instinct. She was taught to answer direct questions quickly and briefly.

“Eleven. Wow. They got me at nine. You’re lucky.”

“Got you how? Where are you, exactly?”

“That’s not important. Ignore me. I’ve had nobody to talk to in forever.”

This was a strange thing to hear. Then again, Liss also had nobody to talk to.

“I’m Liss. What’s your name?”

“Callie.”

During the next few days, the two spent the pre-dawn hours whispering together in the vacant hallway. Callie asked Liss about her life, about the lab, about the new captain and the route of their current passage. Liss asked some questions back, but she was also very focused on trying to find the source of the voice. Was she somewhere else in the ship and speaking through a vent of some kind? Was she just on the other side of one of these frustrating, impenetrable puzzle walls?

Callie didn’t seem to have a job that she suddenly had to go off and do, like everyone else on the ship. She didn’t know anything about DNA, which was strange since this was the purpose of the research onboard. But Liss’ new, strange friend seemed to know a lot about things that Liss had, so far, kept to herself. She knew what it was like to feel a big storm coming days in advance. She knew that there were angry, isolated people like the captain that were confusing. There were also quieter, more dangerous people on occasion. She understood that most people, even those who prided themselves on their instincts, got the identity of those people wrong.

Most of her new friend’s stories began with “years ago.” This was confusing for Liss, because she sounded so much like a child her own age. She also knew a lot about the history of the boat. She wouldn’t give up her own location, but she directed Liss to a cache of old rum in the captain’s quarters and a gold necklace hidden in a ceiling panel.

During the days, this trip had become very different than the voyages of the past. She wasn’t allowed in the lab anymore. Nobody wanted to take over her schooling. People seemed to stop talking when she entered a room. Some of the scientists started handing her photo books, asking her what she thought about the pictures of the people inside. She didn’t know what they wanted, so she complimented the hair and smiles of a few. This would often send them into the soundproof back room, where she would watch them gesturing fiercely and furrowing their brows.

The next port was supposed to be a small island in Micronesia, but the captain announced on the loudspeaker one day that they would be skipping that location. That was where Liss’ dad was supposed to be waiting for her. She tried to go up to the wheelhouse and explain this, but the third mate blocked the door. He told her that The Company had decided that she’d had a handler for long enough. When she asked what a handler was, he looked at her with an expression of surprise and pity.

Instead of reporting to photo time in the lab, Liss headed to Callie’s hallway, looking for a place to hide. Her friend suggested a corridor on the lowest floor, where a stair tread hid the spring-loaded hinge for an unexplored room.

She was prepared for the scent and the dust in here. She had discovered enough hiding places throughout her time on board that this was expected. What she did not expect, when she grabbed her light, was the presence of four tiny skeletons, each with large, rusted chains attached to their ankles and bolted to the floor.

“Your company wasn’t the first to find people like me, people like you, Liss.” Callie’s voice was louder, huskier. “I’m the skeleton in the corner, if you wanted to know.”

She continued. “The pirates took me when they realized that my emotions could control the weather. If they wanted calm waters, they would treat me well. If they wanted big winds to escape someone, they would scare me, tie me up tighter and put rats on my face. If they wanted huge storms, then they would cause me pain.”

Liss glanced at the small, crumpled skeleton, noting the lines that indicated broken bones that had healed clumsily. A tear fell from the corner of her eye.

“But I’m not like you. I’m just the daughter of a scientist,” she said.

“No, Liss,” Callie’s voice was patient. “They chose you because of the lights you see in people. You can sense those divine genes you’re always talking about. You can talk to spirits like me.”

“But my dad-“

“He’s not your dad. They took you away from your parents when you were a baby. I’ve been watching you a long time, waiting for you to notice me.”

“He’s not?”

“They were never going to bring him back. You’re a tool to them.”

Liss was quiet for a long time after that.

She didn’t go back to the main floor that day or night. Instead, she skipped meals and slept down with the skeletons. She could hear a lot of the activity on other parts of the boat here, through the ventilation corridors. Normal activity shifted to organized search groups, radios, people calling her name. The ship started listing like it was going in slow circles, the way they would when searching for a man overboard. She heard the loudspeaker call out every few hours for all hands to report on deck for new orders.

By the next morning, she was very hungry.

“Do you ever see trails through the plankton, Liss?” Callie asked.

“All the time.”

“I’ve never tried it, but the others that I was chained here with told me that there was an underwater path for people like us to seek refuge. That there are more of us waiting. Of course, that was hundreds of years ago, so I don’t know if it’s still there.”

Liss inhaled deeply. “There’s a staircase I see sometimes, just before dawn.”

“That’s right.”

The jail cell was near the emergency larder, the room with the food that the steward broke out only if they were too far from shore to replenish. She waited for the call to report and snuck down the hall, tearing into jerky and crackers and pouring the contents from a large bottle of water into her hands to sip. She was not sated when the footsteps began again, but she wasn’t feeling weak, either. She returned to her hiding spot.

Liss had always been able to feel the darkest point of night. She used her instinct instead of a flashlight to navigate her way to the old artillery room where they kept broken equipment and replacement parts. Some of the gunports could still be opened here. The crew would pass equipment out on the far side of the ship, playing a sort of keepaway, when local officials became too curious. She headed to a well-used porthole and quietly twisted the brass screws that held it in place.

The seas below her were calm. The ship was going very slowly now. Only a skeleton crew seemed to still be walking around and calling out for her. Nobody was on deck anymore, keeping watch.

As she stuck her head out of the porthole, the water below her flashed. Gentle waves pushed away from the ship’s ballast, agitating the plankton. There was no moon, so the effect was even brighter. She saw the spiral appear almost immediately, as if it was waiting for her to notice.

The hole was big enough for her to sit in the sill, bare feet dangling down.

“Go now!” Callie’s voice resonated from behind her.

There was no splash when she landed- the water rose up to buffer her fall like a large cushion. She was surprised to see that she could stand on the luminescent platforms. A small tunnel opened below, with twisting steps. The surface of the water closed above her head. A bubble shifted around her as she moved downward, somehow still dry. The shadow of the ship slid out of sight.

The stars above were barely visible now. Below- and all around her- the world was lit with new, shifting constellations.