I sputtered and wiped my nose this time.
“If I had a dory, I’d throw myself over the side,” I said.
“Where all Blues go…”
Suns, my heart.
“Back with the Navy. Gads. You really did learn nothing.” And he eyed me from under a bushy brow. “Well, I hope they don’t shoot you.”
“I don’t care if they do,” I said.
“Blub, blub, blub.”
I almost smiled.
“What are you going to call her?”
“Her?”
“The ship. You can’t run her under aRhi’Ahrname,” I said. “She’syourship now.”
“Ah,” said Smoke. “I was thinking theWoodraven.”
Back in the days when my heart did not break…
“Well, it’s either that or theFastidious Faun.”
“Tosh,” said Echo.
I grinned wide now, not needing to hide the quiver of my chin.
“I don’t know.Woodraven,Faun, or something entirely new?” He blew a ring of smoke that floated across the fore. “Maybe I’ll paint her entire hull with stars or something silly like that. I’m sure I’ll think of something…”
He dug in his pocket.
“Aha!”
Pulled out a leather flap with a string, slid it over his head.
An eyepatch. Echo had made him an eyepatch. He looked up at me.
“Seas may be rough, but you’ll chart your course,” he said. “You have the map.”
“I did,” I said. “When I had the chimeric.”
“The map’s not in your hands, Ensign,” said Echo. “It’s in here.”
And he reached up to touch my forehead with his long, beautiful finger.
“And here.”
He touched my breastbone next, right over my heart.
How far I’d come aboard this ship. I turned to Smoke.
“Permission to disembark, sir?” I asked.
“Permission granted,” he said. “Now get your Spits-scrawny, chimeric-pocked arse off me scraggy-addled deck!”
