Son of Fortune Read Online Free Page B

stroke of a magical axe,” he translated. “Our little boat was tossed twenty feet into the air, but a great school of fish leaped up and whirled around it like a waterspout and brought us gently back down. By evening, they will have goddesses coming down from Valhalla to pluck us from the waves and feed you goblets of mead.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t turn any goddesses away,” Aiden said.
    The sailors made some comments that, even in Swedish, sounded ribald.
    “They all understand English just fine,” Fish said. “Except Sven the Ancient. But they aren’t good at speaking it. They all grew up on Swedish ships. They don’t spend much time on land, and when they do, it is among other Swedes.”
    “How come you speak it so well?”
    “I lived on land with my mother and little sisters until I was twelve.”
    “In San Francisco?”
    “Yes. My mother was a cook in a dining house. She wanted to keep me from the sea, but as you see, that didn’t work. My family all have salt water for our blood.”
    “Are all these men your kin?”
    “The captain is my brother. Though he is ten years older and more like a father. His name is Magnus. Our own father died when I was five. A storm put his ship on the rocks. Sven the Ancient is my uncle.” Fish pointed at the two men fixing the dinghy. “Jonas, there with the hammer, is his son; Gustav is another cousin. His father also died with mine.” Fish looked up at the sails, which were taut with the wind. “You have never been on a ship?”
    “I’ve never even seen a ship before, except in books. My family has dirt, I suppose, for our blood.”
    Fish laughed. “Well, come then, I will show you a ship.”
    They spent the morning looking at ropes and winches, pumps and sounding lines, sails and the steam engine—still only half of the hundred things that made a ship work. In one way everything was very foreign, but in another way it was also somehow familiar. It was all solid and functional and quietly ingenious. Fish took Aiden below and spread out charts with wavy lines and striped shades of blue and cryptic numbers sprinkled all over like tiny seeds.
    “These lines mean deeper water,” Fish explained. He tapped a few spots along the coast. “This indicates shoals, and these are visible rocks.” He traced his finger across the thick paper with casual command. To Aiden, it was all strange and exotic. He had always loved maps and could have looked at the chart for hours, but Fish rolled it up with an abrupt dismissal.
    “But we’ve sailed here so long we almost never need the charts,” he said. “Back and forth, back and forth, with the lumber. I am twenty-one—it’s nearly half my life! But someday I’ll sail blue water.”
    “What is blue water?” Aiden asked.
    Fish waved his hand toward the horizon. “Out there—open ocean—where you see no land for weeks or months. Where there is nothing familiar—nothing to depend on but what you have learned and what you feel and knowing the stars. Just the soundness of your ship and your crew and your own decisions. Hawaii, Tahiti, China, Europe, maybe Australia!” He put the chart back in its niche, then opened the top of the chart desk and took out a wooden box. “For blue water—real sailing—you need this.” Inside, cushioned well in a nest of red velvet, was a complicated brass instrument with gears and wheels, tiny mirrors, a lens like a miniature telescope and numbers etched along the arc of the bottom.
    “It’s a sextant?” Aiden guessed.
    “Yes!” Fish lifted the instrument out of the box like it was the crown jewels. “With celestial navigation, you can go anywhere! With the sextant, the whole world belongs to you!” He traced one finger longingly over the smooth brass. He sighed and looked away, out the tiny porthole, where the shoreline was always visible. “Come, it’s almost noon—I’ll show you how to shoot the sun.”
    Since they didn’t really need an accurate reading, Fish let Aiden